Before this season, Pep Guardiola might never have heard the chant ‘You’re getting sacked in the morning’, but lately he has become very-well acquainted with it.
The Manchester City boss did not enjoy hearing it earlier in the season at Anfield, when he responded with a six-finger salute to signify the amount of Premier League titles he has won. But during Sunday’s humiliating defeat at Arsenal, the manager kept his fingers to himself – and with good reason. The Gunners’ fans and players would likely have responded by showing him their hands and all five fingers, one for each goal the Gunners had put past his frazzled side.
It was only the second time in his entire managerial career that a Guardiola team had conceded five goals, and the first occasion that they had done so in a stadium with fans in it. The Catalan brushed off the rare scoreline by declaring, “it can happen to me too, I’m not unique”.
A sign of Guardiola’s brilliance has been the fact that his sides so rarely lose at all, let alone by heavy scorelines, even if, as he admitted, such large beatings are becoming increasingly more common for him amid City’s disastrous title defence.
GOAL, then, takes a look at the most humiliating of all Guardiola’s defeats as a coach, spanning his periods in charge of Barcelona, Bayern Munich and City: