Pep Guardiola has managed Manchester City in 500 games. “That period feels like 500 months,” he said, and he wasn’t referring to the first 486 of those matches. It was two months of trauma that felt never-ending, 60 days that felt like decades to Guardiola, that gave him a taste of what it is to be like other managers, to lose nine times in 13 outings.

It has, he says, made him more grateful for the good times. “Maybe that period will make you realise how nice it was and hopefully we can come back,” he said after the first step in a revival was to grind out a 2-0 win at Leicester. “Maybe we will not be what we were but closer than now.”

It had the air of an admission that the best days of this City team are behind them; perhaps Guardiola’s best at the Etihad Stadium, too, even as he has a contract committing him to the club until 2027. Ambitions have been downgraded: to patch up a team, to limit the damage.

City kicked off at Leicester in seventh and finished the day in fifth. The Uefa coefficient, the ranking points acquired by Premier League clubs that determines if England will get a fifth Champions League spot next season, could suddenly become of more interest to City.

Or perhaps not. There was long the threat that their era of dominance could end in 2025, when the verdict is announced in the case of the 115 charges the Premier League levelled. But, whatever the outcome of it, City have fallen before then because of footballing factors.

Even Guardiola, who has long argued victories were not as easy as they looked, admitted he never envisaged a slide of this proportions. And yet, before then, City were unbeaten in 32 Premier League games and 26 Champions League matches. It is why he thinks perceptions of their 2024 should not be altered by the unexpected end.

“It’s not one month and a half,” he said. “It has been an unbelievable year. We reached the final of the FA Cup, won four [Premier League titles] in a row, reached the quarter-final of the Champions League performing really good but the reality is what you live today and tomorrow with your players.”

The reality has changed in eight weeks, showing a fallibility to Guardiola. “There are things that I feel I should have reacted differently but it’s incredible learning,” said a manager who was unaccustomed to this. “Football is unpredictable and so you can’t take things for granted.” Which, he argues, City didn’t.

Even as others described their triumphs as inevitable, he was always aware of the narrowness of the margins. He often references Ederson’s saves in the 2023 Champions League final. There was Ilkay Gundogan’s last-day brace to rescue the title in 2022, John Stones’s clearance when the ball was 11mm from crossing the line for title rivals Liverpool in 2019. There was always jeopardy, even for a manager who prizes control.

“Football is under control?” he asked rhetorically. “Here are not chairmen, CEOs, sporting directors who believe that everything is going to be fine. You always need warnings. When people say it is impossible to get worse, it can get worse. If you told people in England we could live this period, they would say it was impossible and me the first. All the clubs and managers around the world live this kind of situation.”

And yet the grounds for criticism is that City ignored the warnings, that their decline can be traced to negligence in decision-making. Rodri warned he was overworked last season; by then, City knew there was no way back for Kalvin Phillips into Guardiola’s plans. Yet they did not buy a defensive midfielder, leaving a hole in the squad that was exposed when Rodri was injured.

Others were overworked, too: City have had a packed schedule for years and perhaps Guardiola’s core players have been worn down. Exhaustion has become entrenched by the injuries, some to the overworked, some to the ageing, which has meant the fit cannot be rested. In a season that will include the Club World Cup and promised to feature up to 75 matches, City left themselves undermanned.

Hindsight is not required to say their squad was two players too small; at points this season, they needed another four. But there were also indications last season, even on long unbeaten runs, that the team was not quite what it was. They were dragged through at times by Rodri or by Phil Foden. For different reasons, that doesn’t happen now.

That process of weakening has been compounded by transfer-market business. Gundogan, a face of happier times, has been a flagship failure since his return. Of the six recruits since winning the treble, most are squad players, perhaps only Josko Gvardiol figuring in the strongest side.

City may have squandered their position of supremacy. The best side have instead become the best businessmen. They may have become addicted to making profits, the club who have been big spenders instead becoming big sellers. Unprompted, Guardiola started talking at Leicester about the ones who got away; Cole Palmer, Morgan Rogers, Romeo Lavia, Liam Delap, Taylor Harwood-Bellis. City could have done with each of the young players they sold at times in the last few months.

Now they have a team who were not what they were. They didn’t see this coming, because no one did. But perhaps they should have seen some of this coming. And now they don’t know what awaits them in 2025.