Pep Guardiola does not know his best Man City team

Pep Guardiola has never been averse to making changes. When you go as deep into multiple competitions as Manchester City season after season, utilising your squad is paramount and few clubs in recent years have possessed such strength in depth.

In his first title-winning season with City, Guardiola made the sixth most changes (99) of any Premier League manager; the following year, when they pipped Liverpool to the post by a point, he made 109 changes, the fourth highest total. No manager made more changes than Guardiola’s 136 en route to steering City to a third crown on his watch in 2020/21 and, last season’s title success was delivered after making the joint fourth most changes (106). So rotation has not been so much an obstacle as key to City’s success in the past but, even then, you always got the sense that Guardiola knew his best team. Is that still the case, though? It has really not seemed like it.

A job share in a position or two has never been uncommon but this season feels far removed from, for example, the “centurions” campaign of 2017-18 when the front six – Fernandinho, Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva in midfield, Raheem Sterling, Sergio Agüero and Leroy Sane – rolled off the tongue.

Take Rodri, De Bruyne and Erling Haaland out of the equation and Premier League minutes have been very evenly spread this season and Guardiola has given the impression of a man constantly wrestling to find a formula that works. The result has been rather jarring, all the more so when contrasted with the more serene scenario at leaders Arsenal, whose manager has made the fewest changes of any manager in the top flight this term (14) and has complete clarity over his best XI.

Players who were starting regularly earlier in the season, such as Kyle Walker, Phil Foden, and Bernardo Silva, are now finding minutes hard to come by or, in the case of Joao Cancelo, who has joined Bayern Munich on loan, jettisoned altogether. Others who were out of favour in the opening months (the likes of Riyad Mahrez and Jack Grealish) increasingly feel like mainstays and players who would previously have been squad players (think Nathan Ake, Manuel Akanji and Rico Lewis) are ones Guardiola has been displaying great trust in. Even the shape of the team has changed in search of a spark.

For a side that has been so well oiled and beautifully balanced down the years, it has been quite the shock to see the form of so many individuals fluctuating so much, something that goes beyond the disruption caused by injuries, and collectively it has had a discombobulating effect.

Guardiola has named an unchanged defence only once in the past 25 matches in all competitions but the lack of cohesion has actually felt more pronounced further up the pitch.

After the dramatic 4-2 comeback win at home over Tottenham 2½ weeks ago, Guardiola suggested after four titles in five years that too many players had fallen into a comfort zone and had lost the “fire” that propelled them to such success. They were, he said, a “happy flowers” team.

Spurs are the opponents again on Sunday and, with little margin for error, there are probably plenty of places Guardiola would prefer to go at this moment than the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. City have lost all four matches there and failed to score a goal in the process.

It has become a bogey ground but, with Arsenal to face at the Emirates 10 days later, after the visit of Aston Villa next Sunday, the champions really need two rewarding visits to north London this month. Having taken 13 points from the last 21 available, defeat is not an option.

Cancelo’s departure for Bayern this month seemed more like a case of Guardiola exerting his authority over a player at risk of becoming a disruptive presence than any great desire to ensure he got more playing time. With City hardly blessed with options at full-back, it was a bold call to allow the Portuguese to go on loan but whether it backfires or works in his favour remains to be seen. The manager could certainly have done without losing his most in-form centre-half, John Stones, for a further three or four weeks with a hamstring injury suffered in the FA Cup win over Arsenal 10 days ago.

Last season, City took 43 points from their final 18 matches – when they were playing a lot better than now – but a similar haul may not be enough this time around. They may have to replicate something closer to the form exhibited in the 2018/19 campaign, when they won their final 14 league matches, but they are going to have to raise their game considerably - and Guardiola establish his best team – to achieve that.