Guardiola “doesn’t understand” Guehi ruling despite clear Carabao Cup rule that City failed to meet
Pep Guardiola has managed to turn one of the simplest rules in English football into a personal grievance, and from an Arsenal perspective, that tells you plenty about where Manchester City’s head is before Wembley.
The Manchester Evening News piece lays it out clearly. City cannot use Marc Guehi in the Carabao Cup final because he was not a City player before the first leg of their semi-final against Newcastle.
That is the key condition in the updated regulations.
As of this season, a player has to have joined before that first leg if they want to play in either the semi-final or the final. Nearly two months after signing from Crystal Palace, Guehi still has to sit out Arsenal v City because he missed that cut off.
At the same time, fellow January arrival Antoine Semenyo is perfectly eligible. He had already played earlier in the competition for Bournemouth, but because his move to City went through before the first leg at St James’ Park, he could feature in both the semi and now the final.
Semenyo did exactly that, starting at Newcastle and being “instrumental” in City’s 2-0 win in the first leg, with one of the goals. Some would call that ‘unfair’ – and they’d have a much better case than Guardiola has here.
Understandably, Eddie Howe was unhappy about that but it was entirely within the rules and Guardiola had no complaints then.
The distinction is simple. Semenyo was registered in time, Guehi was not.
Yet Guardiola’s reaction has been to complain as if this is some unfathomable injustice rather than a straightforward cup rule that he has lived with in one form or another for his entire professional life.
“I don’t understand why he cannot play the final,” he said, acting the idiot, because he understands it all fine. “You buy a player for a lot of money (£20m) and he is not able to play for a rule I don’t understand. It is difficult to understand.”
There is no ambiguity here. City knew the regulation when they chose to complete the Guehi deal after the semi-final first leg. The rules are so simple around this, children can understand it. The consequence is not a surprise sprung on them ahead of the final or one designed to help their opponents. It flows directly from the timing of their own transfer.
What grates, especially viewed from north London, is the way Guardiola frames it. City spend heavily on an England international centre back who would have been free in the summer and the manager’s instinct is to ask that the competition bend for them, rather than accept that rules about eligibility around semi-finals and finals exist to stop clubs gaming the system mid-tie. I guess that’s not something we can expect City to understand.
Guehi has also already faced Arsenal in this year’s competition, playing the full match when the Gunners won on penalties in the quarter-finals before Christmas. He also played against Millwall in the third round and Liverpool in the fourth.
If anything, Guardiola should be saying ‘thank you’ that Semenyo is allowed to play at all.
When a Manchester paper describes the situation as “baffling” for Guardiola, the impression is of a coach who expects the rules to flex around his needs. There are perhaps 115 reasons he feels like that.
For Arsenal, it is hard not to see this as a back-handed compliment. The article notes that Semenyo’s presence has already caused “confusion and controversy”, and that Guardiola is openly unhappy he cannot add Guehi into the mix as well.
When the City manager is publicly complaining on the eve of a final that he cannot call on every reinforcement he has just bought, despite having a squad worth €1.31bn to take advantage of, it underlines how seriously he is taking the challenge in front of him.
City are without Guehi because of a rule that has been in place all season and was entirely under their control when they did the deal for Guehi. Arsenal turn up at Wembley with the same conditions as everyone else, having simply organised their business and their squad within those rules.
If anything, the more Guardiola repeats that he does not “understand” why Guehi cannot play, the clearer it becomes that the problem is not the rule but City’s frustration at being told ‘no’.
From an Arsenal point of view, that is no bad backdrop to a final. The structure of the competition has not changed for them.
The only thing that has changed is City discovering, belatedly, that even they have to live with rules that were there all along.