Pep Guardiola built three great Manchester City sides – he hasn't been able to build a fourth

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He was a tactician, a details man, a coach who was there for a good time, not a long time. Instead, Guardiola is, until his expected departure is confirmed, the longest-serving coach in English football. City have stuck by him — which seems a ridiculous thing to say considering his constant success, but during his first genuinely bad run in management, midway through last season, they responded by awarding him a new contract. Guardiola has stuck with City, too. Whereas he seemed to find Barcelona and Bayern highly stressful, he does seem to have genuinely enjoyed his time in Manchester. The consequence of that longevity is that we’ve witnessed Guardiola build several different successful teams. While his Barcelona and Bayern teams steadily evolved over the course of his management, Guardiola’s City had different, distinct eras. He essentially created three different, title-winning sides. Before he won the Premier League, though, Guardiola had to adjust. His tenure is sometimes depicted as an immediate success, as if he transformed the English overnight. That’s not quite the case. At the outset, Guardiola was too bold. His controversial decision to jettison Joe Hart was proven right in the long term, but his first solution, Claudio Bravo, didn’t work out. For all his footballing ability, Bravo found the physical side of English football difficult, and his shot-stopping statistics were poor. In the second half of Guardiola’s first season, 2016-17, Willy Caballero was favoured for his physical presence. Guardiola also rowed back on several of his initial plans, which included attack-minded left-back Aleksandar Kolarov as a centre-back, asking City’s existing full-backs to tuck into central midfield, and leaving out Yaya Toure completely. The overwhelmingly technical 4-3-3 was ditched towards the end of his first season, and Guardiola turned to a more structured 4-2-3-1 with Toure reintegrated because he offered experience and physicality that the pure technicians did not. Notably, Guardiola started talking about the importance of set-pieces and second balls. English football would be heavily influenced by Guardiola. But in that first season, Guardiola needed to adjust to English football. In his second and third seasons, Guardiola’s City were magnificent. Beefed up in defence by the presence of goalkeeper Ederson, the speed of right-back Kyle Walker and the reliability of centre-back Aymeric Laporte, Guardiola felt comfortable going back to his Plan A: a more technical midfield than anyone could imagine. Fernandinho had arrived in English football as a box-to-box midfielder, then became accustomed to a more reserved role in a double pivot, but Guardiola used him as the sole holding midfielder behind two players who were repurposed from No 10s (or wide playmakers) into ‘free 8s’, as Kevin De Bruyne called them. He played in the right channel, David Silva in the left channel, and in different ways — the Belgian with power and crossing, the Spaniard through neat interplay — almost reinvented what attacking midfielders could be. At times, it felt like a front five, with City’s left-back usually moving inside to keep the centre occupied. City stretched the play better than almost any side in football history. Guardiola flipped the trend of inverted wingers and used Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling on their natural sides, dragging opposition full-backs towards the touchline and creating gaps for De Bruyne and Silva to attack into. Vertically, Ederson’s ability to hit 80-yard balls downfield for Sergio Aguero meant teams were prised apart, caught between pressing City’s build-up play and defending the space in behind. In the 2017-18 season, City hit 100 points, a record. The next season, they ‘only’ managed 98, but in holding off an excellent surge from Liverpool, who won 97 points, it was an equally impressive campaign. 2019-20 was an off-season for City; distant runners-up to Liverpool. They bounced back impressively to win the title in 2020-21 and 2021-22; the first one with ease in a forgettable behind-closed-doors season, the second after another excellent charge from Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool. The three Guardiola eras can essentially be considered in terms of their centre-forward. Between 2017-19 he used a proper striker in Aguero, with Gabriel Jesus emerging as a useful back-up. But Guardiola was never entirely keen on Aguero, who didn’t offer the link play he’d ideally want from a No 9, and often omitted him for big Champions League matches. And therefore, when fitness problems restricted Aguero to just seven starts in 2020-21, Guardiola probably quite enjoyed finding an alternative solution. Initially, it was Jesus, although the Brazilian has never been the most prolific, and at times spoke about preferring to play from the right. City struggled before Christmas, then suddenly put together a great run when largely playing without a classic No 9. Sometimes it was Ferran Torres up front, sometimes Riyad Mahrez, sometimes Bernardo Silva, sometimes Ilkay Gundogan, sometimes Sterling, sometimes De Bruyne, and sometimes Phil Foden, who produced possibly the best false nine display of this City era, when running the show in a 4-1 win at champions Liverpool. Guardiola’s starting XI for that season’s Champions League final featured — famously — no proper holding midfielder, and no striker either. Gundogan was City’s top league goalscorer that season, but played in the deepest midfield role in the 1-0 loss to Chelsea. Bernardo Silva, Foden, De Bruyne, Mahrez, and Sterling started higher up. It was, essentially, six attacking midfielders (or wingers) together. The selection that day didn’t work out. Still, it was a demonstration of what Guardiola’s second iteration of City was all about, although whether this was entirely by choice is questionable. That summer, City made moves to sign both Harry Kane and Cristiano Ronaldo. Neither move happened, so City continued playing without a striker. De Bruyne stepped up and replaced Gundogan as City’s top scorer in 2021-22, holding off another strong challenge from Liverpool to win the league. From 2022, City took on a completely different identity. Erling Haaland was unlike anyone Guardiola had worked with before, a pure penalty-box player. Haaland couldn’t be used as anything other than a No 9. He didn’t drop deep, and he has never been used out wide, even as a surprise one-off against a weak full-back, for example. The whole side would be based around him. City sold players like Gabriel Jesus and Raheem Sterling, who were runners and finishers rather than creators, because City now needed players who would focus on assisting Haaland. De Bruyne’s role completely changed. Having been primarily a goalscorer the previous season (15 goals and eight assists), he reverted to being a creator (seven goals and 16 assists). Exactly half those assists were for Haaland. He’d sometimes played from the inside-left channel the previous season, but now played almost exclusively from his classic inside-right role. Equally interesting was what happened in defence. After spending much of his career using attacking, creative overlapping full-backs, or technically gifted converted midfielders who could drift into the centre of the pitch, Guardiola suddenly became obsessed with using centre-backs in the wide defensive roles. Josko Gvardiol, Nathan Ake and Manuel Akanji all played those positions after Guardiola became obsessed with one-on-one battles and ‘winning the duels’, almost talking about football in old-fashioned English terms. The player to step into midfield was now John Stones, playing a very unusual half-back role. Usually this was as part of a double pivot alongside Rodri, although in the Champions League final against Inter, he stepped forward to become a No 8. That particular tactic had mixed success — Stones was often the free man but didn’t know how to use the ball between the lines — but City got over the line and won their first Champions League in 2023. They did it, by and large, by beefing up the side with old-school defenders and an old-school striker — while still, of course, insisting on dominating possession. The recipe for the following season was broadly similar. One of the most telling aspects of Haaland’s dominance was Guardiola’s use of Julian Alvarez. He belonged up front. But that spot was taken, and Guardiola was so desperate to get Alvarez into the side that he often fielded him as the right-sided No 8 in a 4-3-3. This was the player who started up front for Argentina when winning the World Cup midway through the previous season, but it wasn’t a long-term solution. Alvarez left at the end of a campaign, knowing he wouldn’t reach his full potential when playing second fiddle to Haaland. But that was OK; City had made it four in a row. And this, really, was the time for Guardiola to call it a day. He’d become the first manager in English football history to win four straight titles. He’d also won a domestic treble, a ‘proper’ treble, and a record points tally. He’d essentially completed English football. It would have been great to see the most fascinating coach of his generation — perhaps of all-time — take on a new challenge. Instead, Guardiola kept going. But with everything based around Haaland, his scope for reinvention was limited. Midway through the 2024-25 season, shortly after Guardiola signed a contract until 2027, Haaland signed a contract until 2034. A 9.5-year contract was almost unprecedented. Haaland would be a permanent fixture at City. That, in part, has been the problem. Guardiola used to be sceptical about the value of pure strikers like Haaland. The Norwegian’s scoring record is astonishing — 112 goals in 132 Premier League games — but it remains questionable whether he’s made City any better. The season before Haaland joined, when City didn’t have a true striker, and De Bruyne was their top goalscorer with only 15, they nevertheless hit 99 Premier League goals. Since Haaland joined, they’ve scored 94, 96, 72, and now — with one game remaining — 76. They’ve also gone from conceding 22 goals in the season before he joined, to conceding 33, 34, 44, and 33. There’s obviously less of a connection between a centre-forward and the defensive record, but City feel more open, and less patient, with Haaland up top. With the arguable exception of that scrappy first season in Manchester, the last two seasons of City have been Guardiola’s worst. Of course, that’s in the context of almost constant success. He won six out of seven titles in Barcelona and Munich, and even in his one ‘failure’ — in 2011-12 when Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid won the league — Barcelona were still an excellent side, winning 91 points. But midway through last season, City were a shapeless mess, unable to cope with the absence of Rodri, and conceding more chances than they were creating. There’s been a partial recovery this season, and winning both domestic cups shouldn’t be brushed under the carpet. They’ll still finish in second place, too. The 2025-26 season, though, has been unconvincing. At one point, Guardiola seemed to have abandoned his traditional principles and used multiple attacking midfielders in free roles. At another point, he seemed to think Antoine Semenyo was a better candidate for the No 10 role than more classic playmakers. He’s had spells of loving Rayan Cherki, and periods when he seems unconvinced. Since the turn of the year, City have dropped points against Nottingham Forest, Tottenham Hotspur, and West Ham United, three sides who have been battling against relegation. That draw to Tottenham was incredible; 2-0 up at half-time it seemed the home supporters were torn between leaving early and physically removing Thomas Frank from the football club. But Tottenham roared back to win a point. In January, they lost a 1-0 lead to a Chelsea side without a permanent manager, and then were completely outplayed by a Manchester United side without a permanent manager. They also followed up a dominant first half at Everton by going 3-1 down in the second half. They came back to 3-3, but this was the game that swung the title race back into Arsenal’s hands. Compared to every other iteration under Guardiola, this City side lacks connections between attackers, lacks control of matches, and aren’t tactically flexible. No-one relishes playing against Haaland. But he has off-days, and often no-one else steps up. Twelve games into this Premier League season, Haaland had scored 14 goals and no-one else had more than one. Bizarrely, City’s second-top goalscorer at that point was Burnley centre-back Maxime Esteve, who scored two own goals in City’s 5-1 win. The pattern hasn’t been so extreme since then. But often it’s been Haaland or nothing, and that’s not what Guardiola’s philosophy is all about. Guardiola built three great sides: 2017-19, 2020-22, and 2022-24. He hasn’t been able to build a fourth great side, which probably depended on more evolution, and less of a reliance on one dedicated goalscorer. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms