Pep Guardiola is adamant he does not need to change – this season is the acid test

Telegraph

a day ago

Pep Guardiola regards Manchester City's lost season of 2024-2025, and his team's great winter slump, chiefly as an aberration brought on by an injury crisis that he saw as unprecedented – and that view seems to get stronger as time goes on.
After Juventus were dispatched by City in the last group-stage game of the Fifa Club World Cup in Orlando on Thursday, Guardiola was saying much the same. He spoke of the absence last season of Rodri, the Ballon d'Or winner, now back in the starting XI. Of all the training sessions that did not function properly because of those missing, and the impossibility of succeeding in the Premier League if a team cannot train as they would play.
In Guardiola's mind, last season's downward curve was a question of personnel and not one of style – and this season will put that theory to the test.
Certainly against Juventus there was a familiar sense of control about City. An echo of the mighty football machine built to grind an opposition back behind its passing arc of doom, while City await an overload, an error, that signals the moment for an incursion. This defined the Premier League's Guardiola era and there were times when it felt unbreakable.
Then, in the space of a few weeks last November and December, the spell was broken, and Guardiola and his players were like any other club on a dismal run.
'We had an incredible squad and team,' Guardiola said on Thursday, 'but we were injured, 50 per cent of the players, so it means we went down and cannot compete.' He talked about the weeks last season when 'all the central defenders [were] out' and there were times when none of his four first choices were properly fit.
Even when City were out of the worst of it – that period from the end of October to Boxing Day when they lost nine and won just once in 13 games – there were still bad results. They went from two up against Paris St-Germain to conceding four in 25 minutes. Arsenal beat them 5-1; Real Madrid beat them home and away; Liverpool won at the Etihad and Nottingham Forest grabbed a late win over City at the City Ground.
There was, of course, no Rodri for any of this. Yet at the same time the successful teams of the season, Liverpool and PSG most notably, were playing a different style of football – more direct, less risk-averse than Guardiola's own brand of the game, sans Rodri.
It is easier to imagine a City team without Erling Haaland than it is one without Rodri. The midfielder is fundamental to Guardiola's need for control. But there also is no doubt that both Liverpool and PSG showed there was a way to disrupt the Guardiola approach and this season one expects they will try to do so again. From PSG's point of view, that moment could come as soon as next week at the Club World Cup, should both teams make it to the final.
Then there is the question of what a summer of tournament football might mean for City, and for all the Club World Cup's European sides as they return to domestic competition. There are other factors too, further beyond Guardiola's control – the culmination of City's epic legal battle with the Premier League, the departure of Guardiola long-term ally, sporting director Txiki Begiristain.
Guardiola's ability to maintain the standard of his side while changing it completely into what will be his 10th season in the Premier League has been remarkable. Generally speaking, City have bought the right players, Guardiola has corralled them into his vision and the results have been spectacular. Some, like Matheus Nunes, have taken longer to assimilate and only very few, Jack Grealish among them, are rejected.
By the same reckoning, the departures have been timed unerringly. A whole title-winning team was dismantled in Guardiola's first six years. Monday's opponents in the Club World Cup last 16, Al-Hilal, have João Cancelo, another cast out by Guardiola. Kevin De Bruyne would have liked another year but Guardiola thought otherwise. Even the coaching staff goes through cycles, the seat next to Guardiola now occupied by former Liverpool assistant Pep Ljinders.
All the change has been a key part of the Guardiola aura, a restlessness that reflects the unyielding nature of what happens on the pitch – it never stops. Even the biggest names are being borne imperceptibly towards the exit.
At the back of his mind Rodri will know that this season must go well for him or, turning 30 next June, doubts will foment around him, too. Although one wonders if Guardiola feels the same way. Whatever the challenge, his has been an extraordinary 18 years as a coach – it barely needs repeating how his influence has touched the game right through its levels. He has adjusted and innovated. But last season was by far the biggest challenge to the Guardiola supremacy since he started winning Premier League titles.
Guardiola is sure that the method is sound, and that both in terms of the style and profile of his squad – its ambition, age and experience – he has arrived upon the right dynamic. In the last six months City have bought young players, as everyone must now, but they have also signed more established individuals. Like Omar Marmoush, among the very top players in the Bundesliga, and Tijjani Reijnders, who enjoyed the same status in Serie A.
Being right has been the professional calling card of Guardiola's career and it is the most powerful asset a manager can wield. As other greats before him have shown, most notably Sir Alex Ferguson, it can transform a club and elevate the careers of some players far above those of their peers. And year after year it has to be refreshed.