First it was Rodri's injury. Then the decline of Kevin De Bruyne. Then the shape of Phil Foden. At a certain point it was something to Erling Haaland. And Pep Guardiola did not escape criticism either.
In reality, the problems of Manchester City have been numerous this season and no reason can explain or apologize a campaign of relatively failure.
No trophies. No titles. No celebrations after the season in which Pep on Confetti Cannon Duty, Haaland and Or Nomouwon take the lead over the Champagne Soaking, and Kyle Walker becomes MC. Scraping for Champions League football was as good as it got. What do you even start with that?
A positive will be that the scale of the rebuilding has been extensively unveiled. Guardiola can only claim to want a small group, and there are clear merits from having a highly motivated, compact team but only if it is filled with real competitors who can play 40-50 games per season.
Too many MAN City players fell under the standard this season and behave more like squadron players than seasoned champions. De Bruyne, Foden and Haaland can be well characterized under that banner, although the 24 target contributions of the latter (21g, 3a) are hardly mediocre and all have passed injuries. As a collective they were far from the worst offenders.
Perhaps something has been saved from the wreck if City was able to deny Crystal Palace their largest day in the FA Cup final of May. Instead, Guardiola's side remained faithful to the only certainty of this season: a dedication to Underwhelm.
The counter -attack winner of Ebereechi Eze was the obvious way in which the underdogs would score at Wembley. A nice tactician like Pep would have seen that possibility, a mile away. And yet the city was powerless to prevent it from happening. They were played as a violin.
That loss, only the newest blow in a long list of disappointments, started the next phase of Soul searching. Undoubtedly City enters a new chapter, a without Talismanic de Bruyne and Captain Walker, and possibly also getting older Ilkay Gundogan.
The recruitment team looks at younger blood. That was certainly the tone of their £ 180 million winter edition, which brought, among other things, the arrival of Omar Marmoush, which will help shape attacking patterns next to Haaland. Riper fruit has already bored that relationship.
But problems run deeper. What remains of Jack Grealish, from Bernardo Silva, even from the young Rico Lewis and James Mcatee? All are exposed during this confusing mix of a season, which actually started, bizarre, with five emphatic victories when you record the Community Shield Triumph over Manchester United in August.
It is easy to forget that Man City did not lose a competition match until November – when the wheels really fell in the absence of the affected Rodri. The implosion that followed took the world of football through full surprise. As if the hard disk was somehow hacked in one way or another, so that the wealth of tactical secrets was exposed.
Apparently Rodri is really that important.
City could not score this period in six different Premier League matches, as much as they had together in the last two campaigns. Goalscoring allocation had also fallen and managed 96 on the way to the title of last year and only 72 this time.
Pep brought the second most changes (112) to his starting XI on each side, slightly behind Man Utd (114) and Tottenham (121), which ended 15th and 17th respectively. The 30 used players had a combined average age of 27 years 81d, an increase compared to 26 last year, which caused his own problems.
City ends this season with their lowest owner since the Manuel Pellegrini era. Slick Pass and Moving became glacial. Habits broken. “We can't do it,” would repeat a surprised pep in press conferences. Such levels of adversity are strange to a manager who is respected.
Perhaps a campaign of comparative misery has an equal healing potential. A kind of catharsis, with the power to revitalize. The rescheduling of Pep's Coaching Staff – with three long -standing assistants who leave the club – proves that he is the only immune to the after effects of under performance. Need fresh ideas.
So what about his team?
The Domino effect of Rodri's Val not only revealed gaping holes in midfield, but discovered a fundamental error in the recent process of the city.
The lack of midfield options that are suitable or intelligent enough to play the style of Pep, has certainly been the largest recruitment failure of the club in recent years – none of Kalvin Phillips (do you remember?), Matheus Nunes, Mateo Kovacic or the recurring Gundogan, at 34, fits in with the assignment.
“I think he is not a player to play in midfield because he is not smart enough,” said the city boss about Nunes after the lifeless Manchester Derby of April.
The pursuit of Nico Gonzalez, however – signed from Porto for £ 50 million in January – indicates that Guardiola's love for a dynamic ball -oriented central midfielder is not completely eroded. The 23-year-old, graduated from La Masia, is perhaps a bit rough on the edges, but has already shown that he can play instead of, or even next to, Rodri.
Rumors about a movement for AC Milan's Tijjani Reijnders, of similar peers, also improves the same school of thinking and would like to suggest a phasing from Bernardo and Gundogan. The pursuit of Wolven Full-back Rayan Ait-Nouri certainly also spells the end of the Nunes experiment.
Without De Bruyne, City also needs a new head leader. Guardiola is forced to limit various options, given the follow -up plan, which once led directly to Foden, is now much less certain.
The rise of Nico O'Reilly and the constant sparkle of Josko Gvardiol has again thought of how City creates and maintains a threat of broad, but that cannot be the only way. Jeremy Doku and Savinhos are both moments of players, their talents only on the show. Guardiola may claim that he keeps “Love Wingers”, but this game of tactical Tetris feels more complicated than ever.
Grealisk is another problem. Opponents against whom Grealish completed 90 minutes in 2025 are Salford, Leyton Orient, Plymouth and Leicester. He succeeded a total of 715 minutes of competition football and collected more yellow cards (3) than target contributions (2). This month's definitive loss of FA Cup was mainly revealing, because 19-year-old debutant Claudio Echeverri was called from the bank, with Grealish Left in The Wings.
His days are certainly numbered. And yet the irony, the Grealisk of Old, the vintage brand Aston Villa of unrestrained Grealishe, has the exact mix of intelligence and disturbing creativity that city has missed so badly.
In the end, a few are protected against the crossfire of this shabolic season, City's first without a large trophy for eight years, except Pep itself of course. Instead of poor performance that undermines its position, it strengthened it and signed a new deal in the midst of the whirlwind of the November collapse. City did not win any competition that month.
Guardiola has committed itself to the rebuilding. Can he come up with another big idea, a final series of game-shifting solutions? “New faces will come, especially in positions that are a bit weaker, but I don't think much, I don't think much,” he repeated on the last day in Fulham, doubled on his unveiling, he would rather stop than to let players “in the freezer”.
“We have a good team, they have contracts, they will stay here and I don't want many players,” he added.
Although this was not a normal year for Guardiola, or the modern machine in Manchester City, it was fascinating. The next episode of the Saga will still be intriguing.
Will Pep get his wish? Or are we about to see a real transforming summer in the pursuit of corrective glory …
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