Pep Guardiola And The One Thing Manchester City Has Lost

Eyebrows were raised as soon as the team sheets landed for Manchester City’s Champions League clash with Bayer Leverkusen.

Given the intense schedule that lies ahead for Pep Guardiola’s side, changes were expected.

But the 10 alterations from the starting lineup against Newcastle United made the team unrecognisable.

Even the goalkeeper was swapped, and for the majority of the game, it showed.

Opportunities to capitalize on the German side’s sloppy build-up were frequently passed up City got the ball in dangerous areas, but in the opening exchanges, never looked like scoring.

As the game wore on, Guardiola called upon more and more starters to help make the breakthrough, and by the end of the game, Erling Haaland, Jeremy Doku, Phil Foden, and Rayan Cherki were all on the field.

But a 0-2 deficit couldn’t be overturned, thanks in no small part to an excellent performance by Leverkusen’s goalkeeper Marc Flekken.

In the postgame, Guardiola bore the brunt of the blame for the defeat.

“I have to accept it,” Guardiola told TNT Sport in response to criticisms about the number of changes. “If we win, it wouldn’t be a problem, so I have to accept that maybe it’s a lot.”

“I always had the belief of the long season and everyone had to be involved but maybe it was too much. They played not to make mistakes instead of doing what we had to do.

“It was not the performance that we thought. I take full responsibility. We missed something. We missed an incredible opportunity and now we need to fight in the next games.”

“They tried to do it [perform] but when you are in a big team you have to show off,” said Guardiola. “Everyone – [including] the guys who came from the bench – were the same. Every shot was blocked, they slipped 10 times.

“Maybe with the players who played regularly lately, maybe we would have had confidence. I always like to be too nice and involve everyone because I have the feeling after the international break there are games every three or four days hopefully and there is no human being can sustain that.”

The caveat to the criticism is that, by the end of the game, Manchester City had created enough to win.

The statistics showed the home side generated 1.84 expected goals (xG) from 19 shots compared to Leverkusen’s 0.55 from seven attempts. But the only figure that matters is the one on the scoreboard and that told a different story.

Perhaps if Guardiola had started with Haaland, Foden, and Doku, things would have been different, suggested former City midfielder Michael Brown.

“The message from a lot of people will be, why didn’t you play a stronger team?” he told BBC Radio 5 Live. “Win the game and then make the changes, that is what people will say.

“There was almost an expectation that it was just going to be routine, but what it did do with those changes was give that away side a massive lift. If you’re walking on to the pitch looking across you’d be thinking we’ve got a great chance with all those players sat on the bench. That gave them the belief.

“That said, you still feel like the performance could have been a lot better from City with the players they had.”

The suggestion from other outlets was that the loss demonstrated the current lack of squad depth at the Etihad Stadium.

Writing for Sky Sports, journalist Sam Blitz claimed “Pep Guardiola has a squad depth problem and it’s more than just an over-reliance on Erling Haaland.”

He added: “This is Guardiola’s City – and a manager once famed for his ‘Pep roulette’ rotation policy. City were once a team who could leave players in their prime such as Kevin De Bruyne, Rodri, John Stones and Ilkay Gundogan on their bench and still deliver with those who took on the mantle.

“This City did not look like that. Anyone thinking that City are back and hitting the levels of their four-titles-in-a-row achievement will have rowed back on that viewpoint in recent days following back-to-back defeats.

“And it was not as if City put out a team of youngsters against Leverkusen. Nine out of the starting XI will likely go to the World Cup with their countries in the summer – the exceptions being Rico Lewis and Nico Gonzalez, who are part of big national talent pools in their positions.

“These were the players City have in reserve if and when injuries strike – in a season where every team seems to be getting injuries.”

However, the issue is less about the players and more about their mentality.

The most significant difference from the City teams of the past is not the talent pool being significantly worse, although there is a strong case to be made that the current crop lacks experience; rather, it is the winning culture.

It never felt like City could wrestle back control of the game from Leverkusen and it’s not the first time.

Every time this season the team has fallen behind, they’ve lost, but they have recovered to win from drawing positions. However, you have to go back to last season to find a reversal.

There isn’t that inevitability at the Etihad these days that victory can be snatched from the jaws of defeat.

The problem for Pep Guardiola was not that he didn’t field his strongest team; it’s that when he called upon them, they couldn’t deliver the goods.