I admire the optimism around Pep Guardiola making a kingly comeback once he dives into the January transfer window, but it is misplaced. You only need to look at the data to understand why.
Pep Guardiola’s problem is not the injury to Rodri or a failure to sign good replacements/backups to the players he has. It’s that he hasn’t been able to make the generational leap of replacing/integrating players he signed early on at Manchester City with new players he’s signing.
He has spent about £994m in the last 6 years alone trying to replace and integrate new players into his system without much success.
Players like Grealish, Kalvin Phillips, Gvardiol, Nunes, Doku, Kovacic, Alvarez, Savinho, Akanji, etc, all came in during this period.
It’s either they’re good individually but not good as a collective with the team or they’re just not clicking.
Those saying “that’s how he always does and still wins” are being ridiculous. No, Pep Guardiola has NEVER been here before.
Heck, I’d argue that no big name manager has ever been here before.
He lost just 11 Premier League matches over the last 3 seasons. This season alone, he's lost 6 in the last 8 matches and it's still December.
In the last 3 seasons, he’s had 62, 61, 73 goal differences respectively. This season, he has 4 and it’s half season already.
The worst ever season he’s had since joining City until now was his first season when his team conceded 39 goals. He’s conceded 25 goals already this season and it’s still December.
Like I said, his problem isn’t the Rodri injury (Rodri’s injury was just a trigger) or a failure to sign replacements/integrate new players; it’s a failure to make the generational leap where the old blend with the new.
Pep has been at Manchester City since 2016 (that’s 8 years now). His first major attempt at integration came 2 years after he joined City and hasn’t really been successful despite success on the pitch.
This attempt at integration over the last 6 years has seen him splash over £994m on 20 players.
9 out of the 20 are no longer at the club. 6 are struggling to gel with the team and get going.
Which means out of 20 signed in the last 6 years, only 5 could be said to have integrated well. And let’s be honest, that’s not enough for a serious team.
The sad part is that his problems are only just starting. Apart from the integration problem, he has an ageing squad.
Of the 23 players in his first team currently, 8 are above 30, five of them are between 27 and 29.
That’s 10 left below 27. Of those 10, four are academy graduates still struggling to fit in.
Of the remaining 6, new signings Doku, Nunes, Savinho and Gvardiol are still there, trying to fit in.
Of the last 2, Phil Foden has been unable to replicate last season’s exploits while Haaland stays humble in the absence of a fit midfielder to unlock him.
Of the 5 between 27 and 29, only 4 are really fitting in as Grealish has not really been able to deliver.
When you break down the squad that’s been brought in and the attempts at integration over the last 6 years, you realise that City was sitting on a time bomb for a long time until Rodri’s long-term injury triggered it.
Only 2 managers alive have been able to make that generational transition successfully without breaking: Manchester United's Sir Alex Ferguson (5 generations/integrations across 26 years) and Arsenal's Arsene Wenger (4 generations/integrations across 22 years).
Pep hasn’t just been unable to make that integration happen this time, he hasn’t stayed long enough in any club for that to be his problem.
He spent 4 years in Barca. 3 years in Bayern Munich. And he’s now spent 8+ years in Manchester City.
Pep himself isn’t handling the breakdown well. I suspect he’s upset that he didn’t leave before this happened.
If he had bowed out after the treble year, this wouldn’t have been his problem to solve.
But leaving last season would have been negative as it would be seen as abandoning the club due to the 115 charges.
As it stands, if Pep does leave at the end of this season or the next, he would leave Man City, squad-wise, in a position not better than how he met them when he joined in 2016.
His responses to interview questions give the impression that he believes his struggles are due to the injuries but I don’t buy it.
Pep is too smart to believe that his team has crumbled completely due to the absence of one major player.
If that was the case, it would put a question mark on his abilities as a top-level manager. But it’s not. He’s doing this to save face.
Neither new signings nor a return of Rodri would save him. He’s spent £994m in the last 6 years trying that and it didn’t work despite the results on the pitch.
At the risk of sounding cocky, I’d say there isn’t really any salvation waiting for Guardiola in the January transfer window. His best bet is to cut his losses by season’s end and sail quietly into the sunset while he still can.