Pep Guardiola has plenty to think about as Manchester City players take a few days off before starting preparations for Aston Villa on Saturday.

The Blues boss has bemoaned a lack of time for training but also knows the importance of rest for his players and they have not had much time for either during a relentless slog of games. Being out of the Carabao Cup at least means there can be some respite before City try again to break their cycle of bad results.

Many of City's issues have not been anything Guardiola has been able to do much about; he does not lead recruitment and has had unusual amounts of bad luck with his players getting injured and either staying injured or getting injured again, with unpredictability in availability of players leading to a lack of rhythm and form in the team that make it difficult to gain consistency and momentum. Nonetheless, everything is picked over when a club such as City wins one game in 11 and there are inevitably some questions about Guardiola's decisions.

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What does he want at City this season?

The biggest one first. Guardiola surprised many when he signed a contract extension that for a long time he didn't even expect he would.

Some of his close allies believe he wants to rebuild the squad, yet he has flatly denied the need for a rebuild when asked about this on multiple occasions in press conferences. Whether this is in respect to his current group of players or not, when the manager talks about his greatest achievements at the club already being over it leaves a space for why he is still here.

"The satisfaction to do it is done. I don't have any target to make my life or time here different," he said last week. "If I leave tomorrow, it has been the best and I will never ever forget. It's not that I'll not leave until I win another Premier League or Champions League. No. It's done."

This matters because Guardiola as a coach has always used specific targets to push his team to greater heights. When they won their first league title it was the challenge of making history that pushed them to 100 points, the Champions League was always an enormous target and last year when the players looked like they would drop off they were brought back together by the boot room sign put up by the manager daring them every day to become the first team in the history of English football to win four consecutive league titles.

There is always another, but it does feel like there is nothing particularly strong binding City together at the moment. Can the master motivator find something to get everyone pulling that little bit harder in the same direction?

Why not use McAtee and the academy?

City have been badly hamstrung by injuries this season, but Guardiola has also used a smaller squad than he could have done. While Ilkay Gundogan and Bernardo Silva have started nine of the last 10 matches in all competitions, James McAtee has just 28 minutes from two substitute appearances.

That's not to say that McAtee should be starting ahead of either of those players, but his presence in the first team squad - and City knocking back interest in him last summer because they wanted him to stay - should indicate that he is capable of starting games. For every minute he plays, that is one minute fresher that his more senior teammates are the next time they are needed.

McAtee is a separate case because he cannot be considered an academy player given two years on loan playing regularly in the Championship and then the Premier League with Sheffield United, but the same argument applies to a lesser degree with the academy. There may not be many first team alternatives but if senior stars are struggling in multiple games making costly errors, there are a number of youngsters who train regularly with the first team and will be itching for their chance; "Players in Manchester City's academy would run harder for this badge by the way," posted the biggest City fan account on X to its 770,000 followers on Sunday.

Guardiola knows exactly what he wants his team to achieve and sees the players more often than any fans or journalists so has all of the authority to not have to explain his decisions, but that won't stop them being questioned.

Who are his stars going to be?

Every year without fail there are some players who step up and show everyone else the way. When City were really struggling in the Treble season, Guardiola pointed the squad to the examples of Nathan Ake and Rico Lewis for players who kept everything simple and did it really well.

Jack Grealish and Riyad Mahrez were vital at that time getting the goals, and last year it was Phil Foden and Julian Alvarez who made up for injuries to Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland; when Alvarez dropped off, Josko Gvardiol became an unlikely hero with his goals.

This season's standouts are yet to emerge. Bernardo Silva has been consistent without taking that next step of being decisive in games, Lewis has tailed off as he has played too often and neither Foden nor De Bruyne have stepped up.

Ruben Dias and Gvardiol were solid in the derby until it all got wrong so could provide a solid base for City to work from but it doesn't matter where it is on the pitch, Guardiola just needs a few players who he knows can drag the level of the whole team up and quickly. It is these things that are why, as he says, he is so well-paid.