MANCHESTER, UK — Pep Guardiola opted for his best Rudyard Kipling in the immediate aftermath of Manchester City’s 2-0 loss to Tottenham in their first Premier League game of the season.
Seven days on from their sparkling 4-0 win at Wolves on the opening weekend, the 10-time English champions turned in an error-strewn performance to lose on home turf against Spurs for the third time in the past five seasons.
Footballing triumph and disaster – Guardiola was keen to treat those two impostors just the same.
“After the last game against Wolves, the people said, ‘Okay, now everything is fine’. I said, ‘It’s just the first game, many things are going to happen’,” he recalled. “It’s the same right now.
“What we are working on, what the players are doing, many good things… of course, we have to improve. But I said the same against Wolves after the second half. Step by step, we will make the click, we will make the good connections for many things that are still new.”
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This was a far cry from the Guardiola who stared hollow-eyed at the desk in front of him or clawed at his own head as City’s season collapsed last winter. Maintaining a balanced outlook will be key because the Tottenham game illustrated that there is plenty of work ahead.
Man City’s rapidly changing Premier League squad
This is the first time since 2020 City have not started the season as reigning champions. Yet the XI that started against Thomas Frank’s rigorously well-drilled side featured just five players in possession of a Premier League medal. One of those, young winger Oscar Bobb, started just two matches in 23/24.
Another illustration of the rapid overhaul of City’s squad was that only John Stones, Erling Haaland and Rico Lewis remained at the weekend from the side that lost 4-0 to Tottenham last November.
“This is the argument that I have to change a lot of players, because we lost 0-4,” Guardiola joked before discussing some of the challenges faced against Spurs by a team with an average age of 24 years and 326 days – City’s youngest in the Premier League since October 2010.
“When the opponent has man marking in the build-up, you have to attract them to find the next stages, next passes and we didn’t read that,” he explained.
“Apart from that — that is not a big problem – when we arrived in the more comfortable positions, we lost the simple things, because we need continuity with the passes. We cannot attack in three passes, four passes. And today, with the players we had, we missed it a little bit. That’s all.”
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Will Man City have a good season?
That’s all, but Guardiola knows how effectively, quickly and permanently he can resolve this simple-stuff deficiency holds the key to a successful season. The thing about this simplicity is that in their four titles in a row, treble-winning pomp, City made it look effortless and automatic. When they were faced with moments of stress in those seasons, having these basics as second nature was a shock absorber and a pressure valve.
Contrast that with the 10 minutes of play in between Tottenham’s goals on Saturday. City’s build-up, which had been tested to extremes earlier in the contest, broke down under intelligent pressure from the visitors. Poor decision-making became contagious, culminating in James Trafford’s brain fade for Joao Paulinha to make it 2-0.
Trafford impressed on his City debut at Wolves, but nerves appeared to afflict a 22-year-old usually noted for his unflinching confidence as Spurs put the squeeze on. Ederson, reportedly set for an exit before the deadline, looked on from the bench as audible tension coursed through the home crowd in a manner it hasn’t since the Brazil international joined from Benfica in 2018. Ederson’s level of what counts as simple with the ball at his feet is arguably beyond that of any goalkeeper to have played the game.
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Just like other fundamental figures in City’s record-breaking successes, namely Kevin De Bruyne and Kyle Walker over the recent months, it might also be the right time for Ederson to move on. Talk over his future has been a feature of the past two summers. The art of City’s squad building was that they were always out in front of these developments.
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How have Man City rebuilt their squad?
In consecutive summers from 2017 to 2022, Pablo Zabaleta, Yaya Toure, Vincent Kompany, David Silva, Sergio Aguero and Fernandinho enjoyed fond farewells. Guardiola, then-director of football Txiki Begiristain and the rest of City’s brains trust kept things on track kept winning and kept improving.
Over the past two summers, that approach has malfunctioned. After the 2022/23 treble-winning season, Josko Gvardiol was the only summer arrival who lifted the overall level of the squad. Mateo Kovacic has been useful backup, Jeremy Doku excites and frustrates in equal measure and Matheus Nunes is a midfielder who Guardiola played everywhere but central midfield during last season’s injury crisis before turning him into a right-back.
In summer 2024, when they needed to twist, City stuck, Only Savinho and and a returning, ageing Ilkay Gundogan came in — two more players linked with moves away before the deadline at the end of this month. Guardiola opted to rely on his dependable core in 2024/25 and, together, they ran out of road. January, customarily a quite month for City, saw Omar Marmoush, Abdukodir Khusanov and Nico Gonzalez come through the door. Trafford, Tijjani Reijnders, Rayan Ait-Nouri and Rayan Cherki followed this summer. All of those players started against Spurs, aside from Khusanov, who was on the bench.
“Maybe that happened [problems with simple things due to the selection] but I take these decisions because I felt in the training sessions that Nico made a step forward, Tijjani is going there,” Guardiola said. “I imagined when we play against Spurs or against Brentford [Frank’s former team] in the past, when we are able to drop them they defend so deep. Then you need quality, vision, like Rayan Cherki, who is extraordinary for that.”
Cherki playing ahead of Bernardo Silva felt like a Guardiola indulging in one shiny new toy too many, although the club captain hardly improved matters after his second-half introduction. Rodri and Phil Foden, hardened title winners and fit again, brought greater assurance when they played the final 15 minutes. Each has a huge role to play.
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City shouldn’t look as ragged and unfamiliar as they did on Saturday too often, but don’t expect to see the machine that clicks into gear and goes 20 games unbeaten. They needed to refresh, but two years of stasis meant cramming that into a couple of windows.
The machine must be reassembled, if it can be. Guardiola has a collection of highly talented footballers, but they lack that collective, ingrained understanding of the simple stuff. They must learn against opponents like Tottenham last weekend and Brighton next, who have a far better idea of how to disarm a Guardiola team than pretty much anyone did the first time he went through this process in Manchester almost a decade ago.
The most compelling thing about City and their celebrated coach this season is that so many of the old certainties are gone for good.
