Why Man City manager Pep Guardiola’s high standards create a problem in the transfer market

It was around late November that Manchester City finally decided not to pursue business this January, for a few reasons, that were fervently discussed at top levels.

Most significant was the difficulty of doing the right deal mid-season, as well as the issue of having to buy English players due to the regulations on the number of foreign players in a squad. Why buy now for the sake of a single season, when options are limited and there’s so much more scope for the medium-term in the summer? They may need certain players now, but that could prevent them making superior signings later.

It is a fair rationalisation, but mainly because of something that may be becoming a more intangible complication for City: how Pep Guardiola himself works with new signings, and struggles more often than you’d think.

There are indications that this is an issue that develops over time. That doesn’t apply to the longer Guardiola goes in his career, but the longer he goes in any individual job. It may partially explain some of this season’s drop-off, that mirrors a similar drop-off in his fourth season at Barcelona.

It does feel as if, like at the Camp Nou, the Catalan has a diminishing squad that can’t quite cope with injuries in the same way. Like at Camp Nou, there are certainly players that have been signed for relatively big money that have a very reduced role, or have just been quickly discarded.

Joao Cancelo, Danilo, Benjamin Mendy (albeit, to be fair, after a horror injury), Nolito and even John Stones could feasibly join a list of Guardiola'a less trusted starters over his career, a list which includes Dmytro Chygrynskiy, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Alex Hleb, Jose Caceres, Cesc Fabregas, Alexis Sanchez, Mario Goetze and Medhi Benatia.

The transfer successes tend to come in his first two years at a club, when he is instilling his philosophy: Dani Alves, Seydou Keita, David Villa, Thiago Alcantara, Ilkay Gundogan, Leroy Sane, Gabiel Jesus, Bernado Silva, Aymeric Laporte.

The overall list from just over a decade of management does look disproportionately mixed for a coach of such brilliant quality, and it’s difficult not to feel a lot of that is down to the factors that make him so good: a dogmatic view of his ideas of football.

Guardiola’s intensity in both manner of coaching and philosophy is well known, and it can be difficult to get in tune with. For some players, no matter their talent, it’s just impossible.

It is fundamentally why City struggled so much in that first season, in 2016/17. Players were effectively “learning a new way of playing”; “having their entire understanding of the game turned on its head”.

These are phrases heard time and again from Guardiola players. One has confided that, even beyond learning the mental map of a pitch that is central to the mechanics of how the Catalan plays, you have to get used to new movements; new drills. It involves proper homework. Players have to mentally internalise moves in relation to the ball, teammates, the opposition, and also areas of the pitch. That’s quite mentally taxing. Before any individual creativity is allowed, there first must be a fully understood collective framework.

Perhaps one reason it is the earlier transfers that work better is because the team isn’t fully formed. Everyone is learning. There is more space. Once Guardiola gets it fully integrated and fine-tuned, however, the bar shoots up.

Sources say this becomes true of the targets the Catalan wants, as well. His willingness to go for potential options declines, and he gets more fixated on specific targets.

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“If Guardiola doesn’t totally rate a player, he doesn’t want him at all,” one source says. “Or, if he does buy them, ends up not using them. The bar can be too high.”

There’s an inherent inevitability to this, too, of course. For a Guardiola side to stay at the same level, it needs any new players to immediately get up to speed. Otherwise, the whole system begins to fall. There are holes that cause breakdowns in how smoothly it all works.

That is partly what has happened this season, although injuries haven’t helped. It certainly feels like a plausible explanation as to why he regularly leaves over £100m of full-back talent on the bench.

It’s just that immediate adjustment is almost impossible. Even astounding successes, and very definite Guardiola players, like Javier Mascherano and David Villa felt this. Mascherano admitted how difficult he found it to adjust.

“It’s not easy adapting,” he admitted, months into a season that ended with a league and Champions League. “Positioning his vital here.”

Villa meanwhile realised that international teammates like Xavi and Andres Iniesta often weren’t giving him the ball when he made runs at Barca, because he wasn’t making the right type of runs. It was that synchronised. It was only the 5-0 win over Real Madrid when it started to click.

Fabregas should have been a Guardiola player, but the manager found him too erratic, trying to do too much. Sanchez meanwhile didn’t look around enough. Guardiola would be aghast at how, when the Chilean got the ball, he’d immediately put his head down and burrow through rather than look up and look around in the way that had become dogma at Barca.

It means that, when Guardiola looks around the market, there are fewer and fewer players he wants.

It also raises an interesting dilemma if he does indeed stay this summer. With City expecting high turnover due to the need to replace long-serving players like David Silva, it will effectively represent a rebuild Guardiola has never had to oversee.

It will put this issue with transfers to an even more complicated test.