“Now look what happened” – Pep Guardiola hints at personal error in Manchester City’s season | OneFootball

Pep Guardiola has hinted that he made an error in not introducing two young stars more often into Manchester City’s starting line-up this season.

The ongoing campaign has been one of major challenges for the Manchester City squad both in terms of playing personnel, results on the pitch, uncertainty off it, and the struggles to maintain their exceptionally high standards into another season.

An early injury to Oscar Bobb set the tone for the campaign as the Norwegian sustained a leg bone fracture before the opening weekend in the English top-flight, before Rodri would succumb to a serious knee injury in September.

A multitude of problems would then dawn upon Pep Guardiola, significantly hampering his options in defence in particular, before Manchester City would then fall in form dramatically across November and December in particular.

Somewhat of a resurgence has been found in the final weeks and months of the campaign with Nico O’Reilly starring in a new set-up under Guardiola in particular, and the City boss has reflected on his changes in a new exchange.

Speaking to the media this week, Pep Guardiola was quizzed on the decision to substitute Abdukodir Khusanov at half-time of City’s FA Cup quarter-final victory over Bournemouth, introducing O’Reilly into the action at left-back for one of the first times.

“One of the reasons was that Khusanov had a yellow card and I didn’t want to take a risk and we wanted to push a little bit more from the left. In that moment I didn’t think that Nico was going to play the minutes he’s going to play, the amount of minutes, and Josko [Gvardiol] comes into the middle,” Guardiola revealed.

“That proves that don’t take for granted your position in the starting eleven and don’t take for granted that you are not going to play tomorrow. I’ve said this many times, if you tell me in the decisive part of the season to qualify for the Champions League, it’s going to play Matheus [Nunes] or Nico all the time in that positions [full-back] and Josko in the middle, I will say no it’s not possible,” he continued.

“But it happened because they are playing good, they are stable, they are playing good and we have a good process and the combination for all of them it suits. That is the only reason why.”

The Manchester City manager went on to admit that his decision not to play the likes of Nico O’Reilly or James McAtee more often earlier in the difficult moments of the campaign may have been a mistake.

“Now I reflect why Nico didn’t played in November, December, January, February or McAtee didn’t play in November, December, January, February, he didn’t play much. ‘Why shouldn’t he have done it, Pep?’ He should have done it,” the Catalan coach admitted.

“In that moment I thought maybe they were not ready, maybe they were, and now look what happened. So they are ready, so that’s why they play.”

The introduction of Nico O’Reilly in particular has seen Josko Gvardiol emerge as a mainstay central defensive option, with a return to his natural position for Manchester City bringing great rewards in terms of defensively stability.

“He can play both perfectly, but in centre-back he’s doing less mistakes than the days before, months before, he is much, much more solid and stable,” Guardiola said of the Croatian. “And of course we can play there, yeah definitely, keep proving him and doing that.”

Manchester City’s back-four is expected to remain the same for the duration of the remaining weeks of the campaign, with four games remaining in the Premier League and an FA Cup final against Crystal Palace on the horizon.

Guardiola could yet bring back the likes of John Stones and Nathan Ake depending on their own recoveries from longer-term fitness problems, while Manuel Akanji is continuing to work towards a full recovery of his own.