When Pep Guardiola sat in the press room at Monaco's Stade Louis II on Wednesday, delivering his post-mortem following Manchester City's Champions League elimination, the sense of "them" and "us" was inescapable as he pinpointed the reasons for his team's exit.
His strikers "have to be aggressive and pick the ball up, but didn't at this crucial time," Guardiola complained, before adding: "That's why we are out."
He then turned on his players as a collective, insisting they had failed to take on board and implement his tactical masterplan.
"I tried to convince them in all the meetings we had to come here, try to attack and score," he said.