Manchester City struggles different this season but rivals beware a wounded Pep Guardiola

City may have lost their Ballon d’Or winner – and three successive games – but history dictates serial winners do not fade away overnight

Manchester City are facing challenges unlike any they have encountered in the Pep Guardiola era. For the first time since he built his all-conquering team, his title rivals are seeing more than one glimmer of hope.
City have faced injury problems and glitches in form before. There should be caution before making bold declarations about the champions falling backwards given their history of slow starts before pushing down the pedal in the second half of the season.
But there are significant differences this time because a series of issues are presenting themselves at once.
The first most obvious difficulty for Pep Guardiola is his injury list, and specifically the absence of Rodri for the rest of this season.
The Ballon d’Or winner’s loss was bound to be felt after he underwent knee surgery. There is no-one in the City squad like him, so in the short-term he is irreplaceable.
The blow can be likened to when Liverpool were denied Virgil van Dijk when defending the title in 2021. It is my belief Jürgen Klopp would have won his second Premier League crown had Van Dijk been fit.
There are some players who are so fundamental to a side’s chances of success, the team is unrecognisable without them. Rodri is such a player.
When Guardiola lost Kevin De Bruyne for much of last season, Phil Foden stepped up as the match-winner. De Bruyne has been the Premier League’s best player during his time in England. Guardiola still found a way to cope because the defensive foundations were solid and the attacking options the envy of Europe.
Guardiola has looked to Mateo Kovacic and Ilkay Gundogan to fill the Rodri-shaped gap and they are both top players They are also in their thirties so maintaining the necessary intensity levels game after game is tougher for them. Gundogan has not looked like the same player who left City for Barcelona.
City’s win rate with Rodri in the side is 74.2 per cent. They were unbeaten in each of the 34 Premier League games he played in last season’s title run. Of the four games he missed, City lost three.
Now they have lost three in a row and Guardiola has to find a solution. He does not have the numbers in his squad because he has always believed the secret to keeping players hungry is to limit his options to a list of 18 top-class players. When too many injuries hit as they have recently, it takes a toll.
The void left by Rodri means City must consider the transfer market in January. I wonder whether they will try to succeed where Liverpool failed and lure Martín Zubimendi from Real Sociedad, the player whom top European scouts evidently feel is the best No 6 available beyond the Champions League clubs. Zubimendi is Rodri’s deputy in the Spain squad too.
Whether he or anyone else would join City in January is linked to their second problem. Any player approached by City between now and the end of the season will want to wait for the outcome of the case into the 115 charges.
Nobody knows if there will be significant sporting sanctions against the club. Until that has been resolved, a wise agent will tell his client to let the process take its course before putting pen to paper, especially if they have alternative options.
Guardiola has not pledged to stay beyond this season yet, and there is already a transitional period at the top of the club with director of football Txiki Begiristain leaving. Is Guardiola waiting for the verdict too? And is Begiristain doing the next big deals, or is his incoming replacement Hugo Viana already working on a list of targets?
No matter the stature of the club or how solid its foundations, a shadow will hang over it until the independent commission reaches its decisions – and it might drag on for a while if a guilty verdict and punishment leads to a lengthy appeal process.
Despite all of this, it would be foolish to write off City as likely title winners. Memories are short, but they have been here before. Go back to the start of the 2020-21 season when City won the first of their four consecutive Premier League titles.
Guardiola won just five of his 13 league games, a mediocre run by their standards, including a 5-2 home defeat by Leicester City. They were languishing in eighth, eight points beyond the leaders. They would go on to win 21 of their next 25 games to lift the title.
They were playing catch-up a year later too, losing two of their first 10 games. On Saturday, they can go top by beating Brighton and Hove Albion before Liverpool face Aston Villa, so there needs to be perspective when assessing City’s position. They are strongly placed and their attacking power means they are still title favourites.
Guardiola also relishes being the wounded animal. “Maybe people are waiting but I won’t give up. I like it. I love it. I want to face it, lift my players and try it,” he said after the defeat by Sporting Lisbon. You know Guardiola means it, like all the great coaches utilising a siege mentality.
Liverpool did that in the late 1970s when ITV commentator Gerald Sinstadt declared ‘the party is over’ for a legendary team after a highlights show of their 1978 defeat by Nottingham Forest in the European Cup. Five years later they had a couple more European Cups on top of four more league titles.
Twenty-two years ago my predecessor as Liverpool centre-back and Telegraph Sport columnist, Alan Hansen, was focusing on the challenges facing Manchester United as they were trying to wrestle the title back from Arsenal.
United were enduring a bad run having won two and lost two of their first six games of the 2002-03 campaign. Roy Keane’s autobiography had just been published causing off-field headlines.
“Sir Alex Ferguson will recognise this difficult start to the season for what it is: the greatest challenge of his career,” wrote Hansen.
This was the observation which provoked Ferguson’s famous retort that his biggest challenge was ‘knocking Liverpool off their perch’. United would go on to win the league that season, one of the six titles Ferguson added before his retirement.
He loved nothing more than telling his players that they were being underestimated. Such legends are renowned for hunting fresh sources of inspiration to feed their appetite.
What Guardiola cannot control is how events at the Etihad might encourage the chasing pack, especially Arsenal and Liverpool.
This is a massive weekend for Arsenal heading to Chelsea. They cannot afford to let the gap to City rise to eight points and Liverpool to 10.
Liverpool’s players have become accustomed to going toe-to-toe with City, even if it is new territory for Arne Slot.
They often say it is the hope that kills you, and that has been especially true for Liverpool and Arsenal in trying to beat a manager as good as Guardiola.
In this situation, that hope must also be the source of motivation to seize the initiative before City inevitably reassert their class.