Manchester City's cycle under Pep Guardiola looks over

It was only a single line in a Match of the Day interview that also included an assertion that “it’s still November” and “we’ll recover our best”, but it’s difficult to think of a time when Pep Guardiola has looked and sounded so defeatist about his Manchester City project.

Guardiola shrugged his shoulders, leant in, gave himself thinking time as he stumbled over the words - and seemed genuinely resigned to the possibility that, hey, maybe this just isn’t out year.

Winning the Premier League requires relentless optimism, as Guardiola knows better than anyone, therefore to provide the media with a pull quote like that is telling. His shrug, his almost apathetic response to his side’s fourth successive defeat in all competitions, feels significant.

It certainly aligns with what we’re seeing in the pitch. We can go back even further than the last four games and include the narrow victories over Southampton, Wolves, and Fulham in this series of flat performances from Man City; performances of lethargy and unexpected drift.

For Guardiola the cause of the drift is easy enough to explain. Rodri’s injury has clearly had an enormous impact on City’s performances but so too, according to Pep, has the absences of Jack Grealish, John Stones, Oscar Bobb, and Ruben Dias: “When we get the players back I don’t have any doubts that we will be back,” Guardiola told reporters after the game.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Five players is hardly an injury crisis. City seem more afflicted by a general ennui than anything to do with quality on the pitch.

Brighton in particular found it surprisingly easy to get back into the game in the second half on Saturday evening, when the introduction of Carlos Baleba was enough to force Man City into a the kind of deep block we have almost never before seen from a Guardiola side.

Ahead of both Brighton goals Man City were sat in a hunched, cowering position, waiting to be cut open.

It was the most alarming performance yet of Man City’s sequence – and the clearest sign we had, until Guardiola’s comments afterwards, anyway – that things are not going to get much better for the remainder of 2024/25.

Guardiola’s contract situation still lingers, as does a possible points deduction should Man City be found guilty of Profit & Sustainability Rules breaches that they vehemently deny. Those are two pretty emphatic-looking endings on the horizon, but beyond that is a squad looking increasingly lopsided and old.

Bernardo Silva, Kevin de Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan, Kyle Walker, Mate Kovacic, John Stones, and Ederson are all in their 30s. Guardiola has built a squad so deeply entrenched in his peculiar tactical evolutions it lacks full-backs, lacks backup in a number of key positions, and relies on a number nine whose very existence feels like a rebuke to Guardiola’s philosophy.

Indeed, there is a looming feeling that whenever Guardiola does decide to leave City they will face a period of decline not unlike Manchester United’s after Sir Alex Ferguson retired. Not on the same scale, of course, but, like Ferguson, Guardiola has shifted to a streamlined approach that wins through experience and psychology more than anything else. City’s tactics no longer feel cutting edge, their players no longer in their prime.

A rebuild is in order, but judging by the sighing and the shrugging when talking to BBC Sport on Saturday, Guardiola doesn’t have the energy to do it. The end has never felt closer.

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