On the eve of the new Premier League season there are more obviously enticing stories to get your teeth into than the prospects of Manchester City, and yet no manager or club is at quite such an important crossroads.
The greatest manager of the 21st century is on the precipice, facing either a first-ever career comeback to spark a second wind at Man City - or facing the beginning of the end.
Meanwhile the charges still hanging over City puts their future in an even more perilous position than Pep Guardiola’s.
By the end of 2025 they will either have a points deduction and a serious dent to their legacy, or will have poked holes in Profit and Sustainability Rules that might open the door to a whole new era of super-club spending.
Guardiola isn’t fully in control of his own destiny, then, as he looks to dramatically reboot a project that in late 2024 looked dead and buried.
In winter there was simply no way back for Pep. His team was disintegrating. The football world was finally moving on without the man who has defined it for well over a decade. The image of Guardiola with a bloody lip and claw marks on his face was a stark symbol of a crisis that looked certain to end in divorce.
Man City have stabilised since then, so much so that the profundity of this summer and the importance of the campaign ahead has flown a little under the radar.
Guardiola is tasked with a complete rebuild - something he’s never done before – to save himself from fading away. For different but related reasons, 2025/26 is a moment in which both Guardiola and Man City must face their own mortality.
He has never gone more than a single season as a manager without lifting the league title.
At Barcelona he won three in a row then left as soon as he was toppled by Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid.
At Bayern Munich he eased to three out of three.
At Man City he lost the 2019/20 title to Liverpool and found a way back but the transition was almost seamless between years, winning 81 points and coming second before winning 86 points to reclaim the crown.
This time it’s completely different, and judging by the new signings Guardiola is well aware of that fact; is well aware the moment calls for something revolutionary, not just in personnel but in the tactical setup.
Rayan Cherki, Tijjani Reijnders and Rayan Ait-Nouri all signal a lurch towards something more direct, more vertical, more transition-focused than the football we have become accustomed to under Guardiola.
He appears to have accepted he no longer makes the weather and instead must follow it, latching onto the Premier League’s emerging trend towards chaotic, end-to-end games.
“Today, modern football is the way Bournemouth, Newcastle, Brighton and Liverpool play,” Guardiola said recently. “Modern football is not positional. You have to ride the rhythm.”
A Guardiola team leaning into the rhythm of a match is an epochal departure from the juego de posicion that he gave to the world and has revelled in for decades. Let go of positional play and embrace the vibes.
That just isn’t the Guardiola way.
Enter Pep Ljinders, the former Liverpool assistant under Jurgen Klopp who was credited with a decent chunk of the ‘heavy metal’ tactical work and almost all of day-to-day training.
Ljinders’ arrival at the Etihad as Guardiola’s new right-hand man is without doubt Man City’s biggest signing of the summer. It is arguably the most interesting transfer in the Premier League, and at the very least proof that Guardiola sees the rebuild as a tactical job.
Cherki brings Lionel Messi-like dribbling through the lines, replacing the cold-blooded Kevin De Bruyne with something more colourful.
Ait-Nouri is an ultra-attacking left-back who will take Guardiola back to traditional full-backs. Reijnders is more straight-lined, more direct, than Ilkay Gundogan.
All three represent a gamble, but a gamble Guardiola knows he had to take. The task is to go from a 71-point season to 90+, a leap he has never had to make before.
Ljinders can help lead the way. Humility, in both tactical adaptation and in poaching a man who helped define his great rival at Anfield, is an impressive start to the renaissance.
But even if Guardiola has the energy and the ability to take Man City back to the top he could be undermined by the outcome of a court case that, one way or the other, will trigger an earthquake in English football.
Man City aren’t the main story yet. By the end of 2025/26 they will be.
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