Manchester City: “Jesus Saves” Pep Guardiola’s season

Pep Guardiola is finding life at Manchester City a bit more difficult than he first expected, but he may have found his savior in Gabriel Jesus.

Going into January Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola seemed to be struggling to adapt to the Premier League.

In fact, he believes that failure to succeed in England will ‘tarnish’ his reputation. Taken away from the achievements he enjoyed in Spain and Germany.

City finds a hero

As Man City continued to falter and found themselves sitting outside the top four with their local rivals United. It became clear that something needed to be done.

So Pep turned his attention to South America, a land that gave him a certain young talent from Argentina during his time with Barcelona.

Guardiola and his scouts located this fresh talent in Brazil this time, in the form of former Palmera Gabriel Jesus.

The nineteen year old notched up twenty-one goals in his last season with Palmeiras, and his electric pace and ball control is already being likened to that of Pep’s former savior, Lionel Messi.

Jesus certainly hit the ground running, scoring three goals in his first three appearances for the Citizens.

His most recent is his most vital so far, scoring a late winner against a resurgent Swansea City side after Gylfi Sigurdsson had cancelled out his eleventh minute opener.

He looked to have missed the chance as his header was too close to Swans goalkeeper Fabianski, but showing great awareness he pounced on the rebound to poke the ball home in stoppage time.

Will Jesus help City qualify for the Champions League?

A Chelsea collapse under Antonio Conte seems more and more unlikely with every passing game, as the 3-1 decimation of Arsenal proves. So City’s hopes of winning the title this year are a long shot at best.

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With teams from the extremely tight top six dropping points on a regular basis, the time is now for the ones serious about finishing in the top four cannot afford to drop points against teams they should be beating.

Of course at this stage of the season teams in the heat of a relegation battle should not be taken lightly, as Hull City proved against Manchester United last week.

Swansea are definitely in better shape than they were a few weeks ago but with the money and talent available at the Etihad Stadium should be overcoming challenges like this without too much difficulty.

Next: Fans want Wenger out?

Man City did dominate for the most part of the game, but struggled to find the net after going a goal up. Gabriel Jesus can provide that intensity that the team have been lacking.

With talk of Sergio Aguero on his way out, the future may well be bright for Pep and Jesus.