With just one win in the last 13 games, City have already said goodbye to being able to win their fifth league in a row. Since his debut on the benches in 2007 at Barça B, Guardiola had never strung together a run of results as bad as this one. In the club’s sports city, not far from the Etihad Stadium, Guardiola works more hours than ever. In the magnificent sports city designed by the architect Rafael Viñoly, where in recent years dozens of first-level coaches have stopped by to admire the work of the Catalan coach, now it’s all long faces. These days, however, Guardiola receives few people. “Work harder than ever”, they say inside the club. He has tried to clear the schedule of visits and engagement events to focus on trying to get the team to react. At the moment, Guardiola is not getting out of it, although he is clear where the solution lies: through the game. Guardiola’s diagnosis is that new players are needed and to be able to evolve the game system. Football, always football.
“You need to sign players, for sure. We have problems in defense and in midfield, so we need to sign. But even if he says that, I don’t know what will happen. The winter market is not easy, everyone knows that. We need players not for this year, we need them for the next three or four years”, said before the Everton duel in statements on Amazon Prime a coach who does not only miss the talent of Rodri, the brand new Ball winner d’Or, who will miss almost the entire season. Not only the loss of the Madrid player has hurt. Many of the mainstays of the team have suffered problems and others, such as Walker or De Bruyne, are already veterans. Adding a calendar full of demanding duels, the combination has been explosive.
Against Everton, Guardiola had eight casualties and needed to call up six youth players. To face this “new situation for everyone”, as the Catalan coach himself admits, Guardiola is trying to clean his dirty laundry at home. Publicly, not a single criticism of the players. He always defends Haaland, who scores fewer goals than before. “He’s not the one to blame, it’s everyone’s problem”, he says. In fact, as he has done in the past, the coach of Santpedor puts his body to receive the blows: “It is a problem that I have to face. I have to find solutions, I have to see how to make the team react, maybe I’m not good enough”, he says. Time and time again he has insisted on this idea, lately: “Maybe I’m not good enough”, says a man who has lost one of his accomplices, sporting director Txiki Begiristain, who left City this October after 12 years.
Those who know Guardiola are not surprised: they know that behind his great record there is a person who always doubts himself and looks around on how to improve. His circle of trust supports him by closing ranks to protect a man who has changed dynamics, such as having the team train on Christmas Day before lunch. In recent years, Guardiola had given the team a party before the match on the 26th, but this year has been different. It’s not a way to punish the team, though. During the same period of defeats, he has gone so far as to give players a party to try to switch off and come back with a more positive attitude. In recent weeks, the Catalan coach has been exposed to a completely new situation for him: losing.
“You’ll be fired tomorrow morning”
In a fan-made video, he was seen confronting a Liverpool fan in the street who booed him. Precisely in the field of his eternal rival, he heard chants from the fans red where they told him “you will be fired tomorrow morning”. He responded by holding up six fingers, recalling the six leagues won with City. The success of the club in recent years has caused that now all the fans and rivals who have spent a decade defeated, are looking for revenge. Guardiola knows this and tries to make the team react with such passion, that he even hurt his head with a nail after drawing with Feyenoord at home in the Champions League. “It was bad luck, it’s a nervous gesture he always has, of touching his head”, they explain to his circle of trust, where it is admitted that the technician rests less, sleeps badly and lives in a frenzy when finding a way out of this negative cycle.
The problem, however, is not just the players. In the last 13 games, they have conceded 9 defeats. As many as in the previous 106 official matches. The start of the season was actually good enough, leading the league, but at the end of October something broke and the team began its descent into hell. The mix is explosive. Manchester City is living a complex time, after touching the sky by winning the Champions League in 2023. In recent months, the club has faced the trial in which it is accused of 115 financial irregularities. The trial ended a few days ago and now it’s time to wait for the verdict. The final decision rests in the hands of an independent Commission made up of three experts, which will have to issue a verdict after hearing the arguments of all the parties involved. However, both sides will have the right to appeal, so the final decision could come around March 2025. In the worst-case scenario, City could be punished with a relegation to second Inside the club, they deny that the shadow of this judgment affects the players. Guardiola in fact renewed his contract in full until 2027 and has stated that, in the event of relegation, he has no plans to leave.
With two years of contract ahead of him, Guardiola is already meditating how to counterattack. This year it will be about “surviving” by finishing in the top four. Then, raise a City winner again waiting to see what happens with the court ruling. The Santpedor coach is already working with the Portuguese Hugo Viana, the club’s new sporting director, to revolutionize the transfer market this summer by changing City’s backbone with new faces. Aware that it may have been difficult to manage the generational succession of magnificent players, Guardiola does not want to leave the club in a bad way. It wants to be the haystack for the birth of a new team. A new project with new players, sporting director, but with the same captain, Guardiola, who would consider leaving the club only after 2027. At the club, the official version is that even if the team finishes eighth, there will be no change of coach after the whatever happens
