The good news for Pep Guardiola and Manchester City is that the most difficult season of the great Catalan’s nine in charge is at an end. Less encouraging is that the next one starts in less than three weeks.
It is to Guardiola’s credit a Premier League title defence that was effectively over by new year has reached its conclusion with Champions League football assured for next season.
To win two consecutive league games in the wake of their abject performance in the FA Cup final says something for a tenacity and competitive spirit that clearly endures at the Etihad Stadium, at a time when so much of what was previously taken for granted has fallen away.
Equally, City’s problems are many and have not disappeared. And now their participation in the inaugural Club World Cup in the USA looms large.
For Guardiola, to ease City through that while trying to fix what is broken and bring fresh blood to a squad that desperately needs it presents his greatest challenge since his difficult first year in English football in 2016-17.
To watch City’s players after their Wembley defeat by Crystal Palace 10 days ago was instructive. Losing teams are usually up the road as soon as they can change out of their strips on Cup final day, but not this time.
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No, members of Guardiola’s squad stood and poured out their souls in what can only be described as some kind of group confessional.
Kevin De Bruyne indicated that he would not be going to America. Bernardo Silva accused some team-mates of lacking commitment to the cause. Phil Foden spoke of a need to find physical and emotional rest.
Foden, in subsequently talking to England manager Thomas Tuchel, has claimed his words were misconstrued. The truth is that he could not have been clearer. Foden, a Treble winner and last year’s double Player of the Year, indicated quite clearly that he needed a summer off.
The truth is that they all do, but they will not get it. De Bruyne is on his way to Napoli on a free while doubt hangs over the futures of players such as Jack Grealish and Silva.
Agents speak privately of most of the City squad being for sale if the price is right and it remains likely that the team who start next season — only a month after the Club World Cup is due to end — will be all but unrecognisable from the one that started this campaign with a straightforward 2-0 win at Chelsea in August.
City have looked like imposters in blue for much of this season, while Guardiola has far too often looked like a manager running short of ideas about how to fix his broken machine.
City’s main problem has been clear — they have, relatively speaking, forgotten how to score goals. They managed 72 across the league campaign, which was still bettered only by Liverpool but was way down on previous numbers that have made them so irresistibly powerful.
Last season, for example, City scored 96 goals, while in the previous two they managed 94 and 99. Never before under Guardiola have City scored fewer than 80 while twice, in 2018 and 2020, they breached the 100 mark.
City have looked like imposters in blue for much of this season, while Guardiola has far too often looked like a manager running short of ideas
City bid farewell to long-serving midfielder Kevin De Bruyne in their final league game
One only has to watch them to see how blunt and confused they have become, all decisiveness gone. And while those who talk of Guardiola ruining creative players such as Grealish clearly have very short memories, it is undoubtedly the case that something on the City circuit board has fused.
Grealish, Ilkay Gundogan and Silva all look beyond help. But how does Guardiola, who has talked of a need for a smaller squad, get players of their standing and salary out of the door? Where do they go and who can afford to pay them?
Players such as Jeremy Doku, Savinho and Omar Marmoush are already in the City system. They are part of the next wave. But City will recruit further over the coming weeks — as their interest in Liverpool-bound Florian Wirtz and Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White indicates — and that will leave Guardiola with a new-look squad that simply has to fire. He may, incidentally, also have a new goalkeeper by the time the summer is out.
How Guardiola approaches the Club World Cup with all this in the background will be fascinating. The prize money is enormous, with the winners expected to accrue in the region of £100million. But at what personal and human cost?
City will recruit further over the coming weeks as they look to bounce back from this season
Guardiola has already spoken of inviting the players’ wives and girlfriends to America and has said he will take his golf clubs. The messaging is clear.
Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine City giving it anything less than their all once they have moved past palatable opening group fixtures against opposition from Morocco and the UAE to face Juventus in game three.
Pre-season — such as it is — will subsequently be lighter, of course. Equally, players required to go the full course and distance in America are likely to be working themselves back from a late summer break when the new season starts.
City’s fall from the summit has been swift and dramatic. Their return is littered with obstacles and may take longer.
