When Manchester City announced that Pep Guardiola was swapping Munich for Manchester in February 2016, many were quick to comment that the Catalan boss wouldn’t cut it in the Premier League. His tiki-taka
style of play was not suited to the fast pace of English football, they said. He was used to managing superstars, they said. All he ever does is manage top clubs. Despite City winning two Premier League trophies, an FA Cup, a League Cup and consistently top four in the Premier League, many still didn’t class the Blues as a top club.
Guardiola was brought in to change that perception, and his 1,000th game in management, a 3-0 demolition of champions Liverpool, has finally seen City noted as not only one of the best clubs in the Premier League, but across Europe too.
It’s fair to say that Pep’s first season in charge at the Etihad Stadium didn’t go quite to plan. After winning his first ten games in charge, City were held 3-3 by Celtic, beaten 2-0 by Spurs and hammered 4-0 by Guardiola’s old club, Barcelona. The results came in a barren spell that saw City fail to win any of their following six matches as the honeymoon period ended for the new boss.
City would also lose at home to Chelsea (1-3) at Leicester (2-4) and take a 4-0 hammering at Everton. Dumped out of the Champions League by Monaco and beaten in the FA Cup semi-final by Arsenal, it looked like the critics were about to be proved right. How opposing fans revelled in the fact that Guardiola hadn’t made the expected impact in the Premier League.
They weren’t ready for his second season.
Clearing out some of the old guard, Pep rebuilt the ageing defence, revitalised the midfield and shored up the attack. They started with a below-the-radar 2-0 win at Brighton, then failed to beat Everton in their first home match of the season. What happened next was quite remarkable.
City won all of their following twenty games, thrashing Liverpool (5-0), Watford (6-0) Feyenoord (4-0), Crystal Palace (5-0) and Stoke City (7-2) in the process. Their first league loss arrived in January 2018 at Liverpool, but strolled to the title, losing just one more league match, reaching a Premier League record of 100 points on the final day of the season.
In 2019, they became the first team to complete the domestic treble, beating Chelsea in the League Cup Final on penalties and thrashing Watford 6-0 in the FA Cup Final. But it was the way they won the league that took all the plaudits.
A 2-1 loss at Newcastle at the end of January left City four points behind Liverpool and having played a game extra. By March, City had overtaken the leaders and it was a lead that they wouldn’t surrender, even though Liverpool pushed them all the way.
The Mersey Reds still had a game in hand but were losing their grip on the title. By the beginning of May, they were two points clear of City, but the Blues had a game in hand. Victory against Leicester would put Pep’s men a point clear at the top. And Vinnie Kompany’s screamer made that dream a reality. City won their final game 4-1 at Brighton to clinch their second consecutive title.
The Covid season hit City hard, but the Blues bounced back, taking an unprecedented record of four Premier League titles in a row.
But it was 2023 that Guardiola finally achieved what the club had craved since ADUG took over the club in 2008 – The Champions League.
City secured the league title with a 1-0 home victory over Chelsea in May, then two goals by Ilkay Gundogan helped the club win the FA Cup with a 2-1 victory over Manchester United. The Stretford Rangers were desperate to stop City winning the European treble, but had to rely on Inter Milan after losing at Wembley.
A tense night in Istanbul was finally settled by a second-half strike by Rodri to finally give the Blues Europe’s top prize. It was a sweet moment for Guardiola, who had seen his Blues beaten two years earlier and were finally crowned Champions of Europe.
A fourth Premier League title followed but City were beginning to slow down. A poor spell in the 24/25 season saw City lose valuable ground in the title race, and it was clear that Guardiola would need a serious rebuild if City were to challenge again. Once more, the critics came out from under the rocks, this time claiming that Guardiola didn’t have what it took to rebuild a squad and wished the Blues luck in finishing below Liverpool and Arsenal for the foreseeable future.
In January 2025, Guardiola brought in Nico Gonzalez, Abdukodir Khusanov, Vitor Reis and Omar Marmoush to shore up the squad. During the summer, Guardiola signed Rayan Ait-Nouri, Rayan Cherki, Tijjani Reijnders, James Trafford and Gianluigi Donnarumma in the biggest rebuild Guardiola completed since 2017.
After winning on the opening day of the season at Wolves, the Blues lost at home to Spurs and at Brighton, giving the critics something to feast on. City went mostly unnoticed, with Liverpool setting a blistering pace before hitting a slump similar to City’s last season, allowing Arsenal to take control.
As usual, the pundits took delight in crowning the Gunners as champions in November, convinced that no one would be able to catch them and their rivals were simply not good enough. What they forget about was that City were minutes away from beating the Gunners on their home patch in September. And the 3-0 hammering of Liverpool at the weekend put City firmly back in the frame as title contenders.
That win at the weekend not only put City back on the radar but proved that Guardiola just doesn’t manage established stars – he nurtures raw talent and turns them into champion material. Whilst the majority of players who featured on Saturday were already established stars, most were relatively unknown, but have made a name for themselves under Guardiola at City.
That’s a huge testament to the boss and a massive kick in the teeth to those who doubted him, called him ‘Fraudiola,’ the ‘bald fraud’ and a ‘chequebook manager.’ And, as the ‘we’ve got Guardiola’ chant echoed around the Etihad on Sunday, it was abundantly clear that the boss is neither of those. He is a talented manager who knows the game inside out and is a born winner.
Guardiola is building a team that is putting the past, with the likes of Kevin de Bruyne, firmly in the rear-view mirror and City fans can look forward to a new era of exciting football with the next generation of stars to grace the Etihad pitch. He has silenced his critics, who have now once again crawled back under the rocks from whence they came.
Here’s to the next 1,00o matches, hopefully the huge majority with City.
