HOW THE PREMIER LEAGUE HAS CHANGED
Guardiola’s impact on City has been undeniable. Even with heavy investment from the Abu Dhabi United Group starting in 2008, eight years before his arrival, City didn’t become City until Guardiola took over. That said, his impact on the Premier League itself is almost as noticeable and might be just as heavy over the long term.
(*Direct speed: the average number of meters per second that teams advance the ball up the pitch in a given sequence.)
It’s overly simplistic to attribute a full league’s trends to one coach. Among other things, stats like shots per possession, percentage of shots taken within the defensive box and percentage of possessions starting in the attacking third have all increased as well — trends we’re seeing throughout the sport due to the influence of other coaches (Jürgen Klopp and the Red Bull school, perhaps) and analytics. Still, it isn’t a coincidence that the Premier League as a whole has taken on so many of the characteristics of one particularly dominant team (Guardiola’s City).
It also might not be a coincidence that said team began to struggle the most this season when those league-wide trends picked up speed. Total possession numbers have dropped by nearly as much in the past two years as they did over Guardiola’s first seven seasons, while pass completion rates have risen by even more in that span. Counterattacking and directness, as measured by Stats Perform, have become far less desirable, and more teams are attempting to engineer slow buildup from the back.
Tactics have become more sophisticated, too — we see teams attempting to bait opponents into pressing in specific situations now, and they are better at playing through the press — and City’s relatively predictable formation and buildup patterns generate far fewer advantages. When the roster is old, thin and banged up, of course, those advantages dissipate even further.
Still, even accounting for recent trends, City remain the standard when it comes to pragmatic buildup and pass volume.
Even with other teams becoming less and less direct, City have the lowest direct speed in the Premier League. Meanwhile, City’s current possession totals are shockingly low, even by City standards.
There’s long been a joke that, when something goes wrong for the control-hungry Guardiola, his response is to try to assert even more control. It’s fitting, then, that of the 42 City matches that have featured less than 70 total City possessions under Guardiola, 12 have come in the first half of this season and seven have come in the past two months. The tempo is coming down in England, and it’s coming down even further in Manchester.
So are City’s point totals.
CITY ARE PLUMMETING
A team’s form waxes and wanes even for massively successful managers, and heading into 2024-25, Guardiola and City had dealt with some occasionally bumpy patches.
– 2016-17 (Sept. 28 to Dec. 10): 15 matches, four wins, 18 points (1.20 per game)
– 2016-17 (March 8 to April 30): 14 matches, three wins, 14 points (1.27 per game)
– 2019-20 (Nov. 10 to Dec. 7): six matches, two wins, eight points (1.33 per game)
– 2020-21 and 2021-22 (May 8 to Aug. 15): seven matches, two wins, six points (0.86 per game)
That 2019-20 spell was brief but costly: City fell from six points behind Liverpool to 14 back in the last title race they didn’t win. But the worst spells by far came in Guardiola’s first season as he was still figuring out what he had and what he needed. It’s worth noting that even including the first season, Guardiola and City had encountered nothing close to the struggles through which they’re currently working.
(Source: Bill Connelly)
Man City’s 1-0 win over Southampton on Oct. 26 was their fifth in a row in all competitions and extended a 14-match unbeaten start to the season. They were the last remaining team without defeat in the Premier League, and they were two points ahead of a torrid Liverpool atop the table. Everything was extremely normal in Pep Land.
The past two months have been a horror show. They’ve played 13 matches and won only one, an old-school 3-0 throttling of Nottingham Forest on Dec. 4. They’ve pulled just six points from these 13 matches, by far their worst stretch under Guardiola. It got so bad that Thursday’s disappointing draw with Everton actually raised their 10-game average point total from 0.5 to 0.6.
What exactly has gone wrong? We can answer that with another chart showing Man City’s 10-game averages (xG and xGA) under Guardiola.
(Source: Bill Connelly / StatsPerform)
Looking at the quality of chances City have created and allowed, we see that while the attack is in a bit of a low ebb, it is still within what you might call City’s normal range. Their reliance on Haaland has backfired as he has dealt with a finishing funk — during this dire 13-match run, he has scored only four goals from shots worth 9.2 xG (including a missed penalty against Everton) — but that will right itself.
The defense, however, has disintegrated. Previously, the worst defensive spell of the Pep era came at the end of the 2022-23 season and the beginning of 2023-24, when City allowed shots worth a total of 15.4 xG over 13 matches. They allowed shots worth 15.6 xG in just six matches from Nov. 2 to Dec. 1. And remember: This has unfolded while City matches were featuring the lowest total possessions ever.
When City have struggled defensively in the past, it usually has come from bumpy transition defense and the high-quality shots that result from it. City have allowed under 0.08 shots per possession in every Guardiola season to date, but sometimes the average shot quality has ended up a little too high. It’s what has separated some of the absolute greatest Guardiola teams from the merely outstanding ones.
In 2024-25, however, City are allowing more shots than ever. They’re also allowing just about the most high-quality shots we’ve ever seen.
(Source: TruMedia)
Over the past nine seasons, no one has come anywhere close to the 0.22 xG per shot that City are currently allowing, and this has bled over into their Champions League form as well: After outscoring their first three UEFA opponents by a combined 9-0, they’ve been outscored 9-4 in their past three matches. They have dropped to 22nd in the 36-team Champions League table, just one point away from the elimination line.
What’s gone wrong?
From a macro level, a little bit of everything. Opponents are creating fewer high turnovers than ever against City, but they are also scoring twice as many goals from high turnovers: the breakdowns aren’t breakdowns, they’re catastrophes. Opponents are also attempting fewer counterattacks than ever (7.7 per game, second fewest in the Premier League) but are generating higher shot quality than ever (City have allowed 5.3 xG from counters, most in the league). City are allowing great chances from sudden attacks, as in Villa’s first goal last weekend.
They’re also allowing inexcusably high-quality chances from slow, pragmatic possessions, such as Everton’s goal on Thursday.
Defensively, City are worse at almost everything. From a micro level, however, we can also boil a lot of City’s troubles down to a single player’s absence.
It’s frankly delightful that Guardiola created an entire system of play that makes the position he played, the classic defensive midfield/single pivot role, the single most important role on the pitch. When City have what they need from that role — namely from Fernandinho over most of Guardiola’s first four seasons, then from Rodri in the next four — everything works. When they don’t have what they need there, however, it’s like discovering the Death Star’s strangely overlooked vulnerability.
When City set the Premier League points record in 2017-18, Fernandinho did everything, ranking third in the league in pass completions (2,679), third in progressive passes (403), third in progressive carries (423) and 23rd in ball recoveries (207). When Rodri was playing at a Ballon d’Or level in 2023-24, he ranked first in the league in pass completions (3,359), second in progressive carries (2459), first in progressive passes (521) and second in ball recoveries (235). He also ranked 21st in combined goals and assists (17), which is frankly unfair.
In Rodri’s absence, Guardiola has played a number of guys in the pivot role, from veterans like Kovacic and Gündogan to Lewis and, on a couple of occasions, even Silva. Kovacic has done a majority of the work there, but he’s currently 15th in the league in pass completions (911), 24th in progressive carries (131), 28th in progressive passes (103) and 104th in ball recoveries (52). He has three goals and no assists. He is a reliable ball-control presence, but he plays like one person; Rodri was basically two. Combine that with issues elsewhere at midfield — Gündogan’s aging, Foden’s and De Bruyne’s injuries, Silva being able to play only one position at any given time — and you get a midfield that doesn’t create quite as much in attack and at times vanishes in defense.
The easy comparison for City’s troubles is Liverpool’s 2020-21 campaign, which was derailed both by a marquee ACL injury (Virgil van Dijk) and a number of other defensive injuries as well.
Liverpool got consistently carved up in transition and allowed at least three goals six times in all competitions. But they still finished the season having allowed just 1.11 Premier League goals per match (City are currently allowing 1.44), and their worst stretch was a run of 12 points in 12 matches. They didn’t let their poor domestic form impact their Champions League situation, either: They won their Champions League group and easily disposed of RB Leipzig in the round of 16 during their worst run of play. That struggle was similar, but it didn’t reach depths this low.
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Ogden questions where Guardiola’s innovation has gone
Mark Ogdens says Pep Guardiola is showing no signs of coming up with a solution to Manchester City’s current run of poor form.
There are two ways to look at City’s season as a whole. On one hand, it’s all but guaranteed to end up their worst since Guardiola’s debut campaign. They trail league leaders Liverpool by 14 points despite having played one more match. According to Opta, they entered Thursday’s action with just a 76% chance of finishing in the top four, and a 91% chance of advancing to the Champions League knockout rounds. Most teams would love those odds, but anything less than 100% in both categories is jarringly deficient for Guardiola and Manchester City.
On the other hand, 76% and 91% are indeed still good odds. Unless their ongoing trial against the Premier League results in particularly punitive punishment, they’re still likely to land in a pretty comfortable position in the table and play Champions League ball next season.
If better player health and a productive January transfer window prompt improvement, making runs in the FA Cup and Champions League remain a distinct possibility. Hell, if you look at the xG/xGA chart again above, you’ll see that City’s defensive form might already have begun to rebound.
From a wider angle, it was almost refreshing to see that even a monolith can be affected by poor form and confidence. City lost their composure against Feyenoord in the Champions League, making simple mistakes and looking like a team that had simply forgotten how to manage a game while blowing a 3-0 lead. Even on Thursday against Everton, Haaland had a timid penalty saved by Jordan Pickford.
You do all the little, important things so well for so long, and it almost seems like it’s easy. It’s not, even for a Pep Guardiola team. And honestly, their recent struggles — and the ease with which things went from good to bad — almost make their seven years of sustained success even more impressive. When it’s that easy to lose your way, it’s amazing that they didn’t do it for so long.
Four-hundred ninety-nine matches ago, Pep Guardiola had plenty of skeptics wondering if he could dominate a deep and competitive league and adapt his style to fit the opposition he was facing. Now, as match No. 500 approaches, it’s almost the same story.
He proved those doubters hilariously wrong once. Will he do it again?
