News of Pep Guardiola’s decision to extend his contract as Manchester City manager comes as a major boost to the club.
His future was unclear with his deal due to expire in June. He had hinted at a possible departure in some of his media comments and the confirmed exit of sporting director Txiki Begiristain next summer added to the uncertainty.
So, what’s behind his decision to extend his contract by a year, with an option for a further year, which would take him up to 2027? Sky Sports News reporter Ben Ransom gives the lowdown.
Loyalty and hunger key
I have always been fairly confident he would extend but it is obviously a decision he has seriously considered.
I think it’s two-fold, but the major factor is loyalty. Pep loves Manchester City. He loves the club. Let’s not forget it was built for him when he landed in 2016.
He has everything he could want to be successful and he also has the absolute backing of the club’s hierarchy. They were determined to keep him. That pull is very strong.
He is very settled and he knows the players intimately. He couldn’t replicate that at another club, I don’t think.
Alongside that, he clearly still has the hunger. I think this season, he has been asking himself that. Does he still have the hunger to go on and rebuild this team?
Because he will need to do that. This is already what I would call the third version of Pep’s Manchester City.
He had the legacy team, which was with Vincent Kompany and Sergio Aguero. Then there was the team which blitzed all the records, built around Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva. He had also signed John Stones. Kyle Walker, Ederson, and others.
Then there is this Erling Haaland team, which we have seen in the last couple of seasons and which obviously took him to the treble.
But contract-wise, look at the players who are coming to the end of their deals. In the summer, he could well lose De Bruyne, who has been struggling with injury and turns 34 in June.
He then has the likes of Bernardo Silva, Walker, Stones, Ederson and Stefan Ortega coming to the ends of their contracts in 2026.
So, a rebuild is needed and I think he is reinvigorated by that challenge. He has to be.
How City differs from Barcelona and Bayern
I’ve asked him many times about what differences we see in Pep now compared to Pep earlier in his career.
Why is he willing to stay so long at City having only had four and three-year spells at Barcelona and Bayern Munich respectively?
He has grown over the years at Manchester City. He is a different person. But the circumstances are also completely different.
In Barcelona, he was absolutely ground down by that war, for want of a better word, with Jose Mourinho. It was all-consuming. Every time they played Real Madrid, the press conferences were so vitriolic. Mourinho was trying to really unsettle him in any way he could.
It was draining, and he got to the point where he felt he couldn’t go on.
There is so much more focus at Barcelona that at Manchester City. There is so much more pressure on the manager’s shoulders.
He was a young manager starting out in his career, trying to play in a way which would revolutionise the game, and I think all those external factors were tough.
It was similar at Bayern Munich. He was obviously tempted by the project. It was an ‘easy’ job in the sense that they were the champions.
But again, it was very different to Manchester City. There is always that very vocal hierarchy at Bayern, whereas, in England, when do you hear from Begiristain, Ferran Soriano or even Khaldoon Al Mubarak? Very rarely.
There’s very little noise outside the club either. There are no former Manchester City players commenting in the way you get at other clubs.
At Bayern, they have huge, legendary figures who either work within the club or externally. They are always in the media, doing interviews.
So, when things weren’t going so well for him, when he was having those failures in the Champions League, it became difficult.
I think he felt he had reached a natural end to the cycle there, partly due to those factors, but he hasn’t reached that point at City, even after eight years.
Pep excited by Viana link-up?
Pep will feel an obligation, both to Hugo Viana coming in as Begiristain’s replacement, and to Manchester City as a club. He would not want to leave them in the lurch.
I think it goes back to the loyalty factor. Begiristain’s departure at the end of the season will leave a huge hole in the hierarchy. To lose Guardiola as well would remove all stability.
Imagine you’re Viana coming into those circumstances, with all the contract situations we have spoken about.
You would be losing the man perceived as being the best manager in the world, one of the greatest of all-time, but also the stability that comes with the club being built around him.
I believe his extension shows he is excited by the prospect of Viana coming in, and the opportunity to work within a new system and structure.
Before Viana’s arrival, of course, there is the question of the January window. City were short in midfield even before Rodri’s injury, so they will be looking at January as an opportunity.
Last summer, I remember asking Pep and the club over and over again whether they were in for a midfielder. The noise was that they might be if anything came up, but that it wasn’t an immediate priority.
Well, perhaps it should have been, because without Rodri, they haven’t looked the same team.
Ilkay Gundogan was a great addition in the sense that he came cheaply and he knows the Pep system, but he’s not been the same player we saw two years ago.
They need someone else and they will need to assess whether the January market, which they always say is a difficult one, is the time to act.
Remember, whether it is in January or the summer, they will have to move a few players on, as well as making signings, as part of this rebuild. Pep is up for those challenges.
Siege mentality around financial charges
I think there is an element of a siege mentality at the club regarding the 115 charges brought by the Premier League for alleged financial breaches.
Pep is the man who has had to field all the questions from the media around those charges. As I said, no one else at the club speaks, so Pep is the one. He gets it every week.
He projects calm but of course he will have factored the charges into his thinking regarding his contract extension.
It was interesting, a few weeks ago, when he was asked about comments made by Mikel Arteta, who said he had “all the information” about City having worked there.
Pep immediately brought up the charges in response, insisting the club hadn’t done anything wrong. That told me that he is thinking about them, even if he doesn’t give off that impression.
His feeling is that everyone hates us, everyone is against us, but we know we’ve done nothing wrong.
That has been the message from the club throughout this period and Pep has been very bullish on it this season. I think his decision to extend shows that siege mentality in action.
