Manchester City have won six titles in Pep Guardiola’s eight seasons: only three times before in his managerial career has the Catalan failed to lift the league title.
In seasons gone by, you could have looked at Manchester City being eight points behind Liverpool in September and known that a crazy second half of the season beckoned: but this is a Sky Blues side that doesn’t look quite so invincible.
Guardiola could well go two years without a league title for the first time in his illustrious and influential career – but more than that, his City side simply doesn’t feel as inevitable as it used to. So what’s going on? Has Pep lost his touch? And will he ever regain it?
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Pep Guardiola’s competition to Manchester City has stepped up
It’s not just Jurgen Klopp challenging Pep these days (Image credit: Getty Images)
In terms of technical quality, there is no greater Premier League rivalry than City and Liverpool, between 2017 and 2022. For five years, the two best managers on Earth were going hell for leather at one another, regularly racking up 90+ points a-piece with two of the most insane squads in world football.
Arsenal are yet to reach that level under Mikel Arteta – but the standard the Liverpool/City rivalry has had a massive knock-on effect on the rest of the league.
Bournemouth and Brighton recruit elite footballers, Newcastle can compete financially, and all the rest of those cliches that you’ve heard a hundred times. The Premier League is improving, hence the difficulty that promoted teams have found in staying up.
And it’s a problem for Guardiola. City beat plenty of smart teams in their 100-point season, but the likes of Swansea, West Brom, Stoke, Huddersfield, Watford – hey, even Brighton and Bournemouth – were miles behind them in player quality. The gap has been closed considerably.
City simply don’t have the players anymore
The bulk of Guardiola’s first title-winning squad was assembled over two or three years. It included Kyle Walker, Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin De Bruyne, Leroy Sane, Raheem Sterling, John Stones, Sergio Aguero, Vincent Kompany, Ederson, Yaya Toure and two whole Silvas (Bernardo and David) – who have all gone down as some of the greatest Premier League players of all time.
Sure enough, City have retooled their entire squad in 2025 – but so have Liverpool and Arsenal. Back when Guardiola built his first squad, no one could compete with such spending – yet in 2023, they were beaten to the signings of Jude Bellingham and Declan Rice, as one of the first signs that they couldn’t throw their weight around in the transfer market like they used to.
Are the likes of Rayan Cherki and Abdukodir Khusanov as good as anyone in that first core? Perhaps they will be one day – but more to the point, this is a City squad that simply doesn’t feel like a City squad…
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No, really: City don’t have the players anymore… for Guardiola to do what he does best
The landscape has changed for Pep (Image credit: Neal Simpson/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)
Guardiola won quite as much as he did because he was always so ahead of everyone else – and the players he had allowed him to do it.
Take the big players of Guardiola’s tenure. Kyle Walker began as an inverted full-back, became a purely defensive full-back, and was then instructed to overlap in City’s last title-winning season. Ilkay Gundogan played as a no.6, a box-crashing no.8 and a false nine, while Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus both played as a width-holding right-winger, a false nine and an inverted left-winger.
In recent seasons, City have bought the likes of Josko Gvardiol and Omar Marmoush, who have a similar tactical flexibility – but now, the biggest pillars in City’s squad have been specialists: players with one role and one position.
Who’s City’s Gundogan these days? (Image credit: Alamy)
Guardiola played with duel false nines after he lost Sergio Aguero, using Bernardo Silva and Phil Foden, among others, in attack… but he can’t reinvent Erling Haaland. Haaland is simply a forward who plays on the shoulder and dominates the box – and he’s a specialist at it.
The same as Rodri is a specialist in City midfield who can only play that role: he’s not about to become a no.8 or a right-back. Ruben Dias is just a centre-back, Rayan Ait-Nouri is a specific kind of left-back and Jeremy Doku is a specific kind of winger. Jack Grealish could only play the one role in City’s side – and when the team evolved beyond him, he was surplus to requirements.
City became as good as they did, not just because they had better quality than anyone else, but because they were unpredictable. Had they signed Bellingham and Rice, perhaps we’d have seen the pair step up to replace Rodri – maybe Rice would be playing the John Stones role by now and Bellingham would be playing up front alongside Haaland.
Haaland is a world-class player – but Guardiola can’t reinvent him (Image credit: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
If Pep really were out of ideas, it wouldn’t be such a shock. He’s been at the top of the game in England for 10 years and innovating at the very top level, over and over again, for over a decade at one club, is unprecedented.
And the players that he’s signed in recent seasons aren’t necessarily worse than the ones he first had. They’re simply different – the landscape is different, too. Can Guardiola adapt City one more time?
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