Guardiola’s u-turn at Manchester City is a complete rewrite of his football ideals

They said the Premier League would humble Pep Guardiola and force him to change his ideals, and after eight years, it turns out they were right

For almost a decade in England, Pep Guardiola has been the uncompromising face of possession football, the genius who turned Manchester City into a passing machine.

This season, though, the aura has shifted, and the Cityzens are no longer the side that hypnotises opponents with endless triangles but one that scraps, clears, and tries to hit teams on the break.

Guardiola, once the high priest of control, has reinvented himself into a master of pragmatism, and the Premier League may never look the same again.

From possession priest to defensive pragmatist

Even before reaching England, Guardiola had been football’s high priest of possession, the man who refused to compromise on his philosophy of dominating the ball, controlling the rhythm, and suffocating opponents with passes until they broke.

After a horrendous debut season in the Premier League by his lofty standards, naysayers were certain that Guardiola would be forced to bow to the English way of playing and abandon his “tiki-taka”, but the Spanish gaffer proved them wrong, dominating the Premier League with six titles in nine years, including four in a row, playing his brand of high-octane football.

But suddenly, the script at Manchester City has flipped. The same Guardiola who once scoffed at pragmatism has built a team that looks more like Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid than the Catalans’ own Barcelona. What happened? The signs were all there, but it took City’s clash with Arsenal to reveal the full picture: Pep Guardiola has made a complete U-turn on his ideals, and his new Manchester City side looks unrecognisable.

The numbers behind Guardiola’s u-turn

Take that match against Arsenal. At some point during the game, Guardiola lined up with five defenders, withdrew attacking players, and asked his team to dig in deep rather than push forward.

At one point, there was only a single attacker left on the pitch for City, a scenario that would have sounded unthinkable in any previous Guardiola reign.

The numbers were damning: the lowest possession ever by a Guardiola side, with only 32.8% of the ball, just five shots across ninety minutes, and a staggering 60 clearances.

If this performance had been delivered by a relegation-threatened outfit fighting for survival, nobody would have blinked. But from Guardiola’s City? It felt like the dawn of a new, less idealistic era.

Many claimed it was all about Arsenal, that Guardiola feared Mikel Arteta’s project enough to abandon his principles for one game. But a wider look at City’s season paints a different picture.

This was not an isolated case of tactical caution. It has become a pattern, one that suggests Guardiola is now wary of the entire Premier League landscape. Every team, from the heavyweights to the so-called middle class, has Guardiola hedging his bets.

And it is not paranoia without reason. By Guardiola’s own admission, the Premier League’s “middle class” has grown teeth. The smaller sides are more athletic, faster, and technically stronger than ever before. That evolution has forced Guardiola to embrace an approach that, in truth, he once stood against.

The numbers are startling. According to Opta, Manchester City’s average passes per possession sequence this season is just 3.97—the lowest in Guardiola’s career, and by some distance. Compare that to the 5.58 they posted just two seasons ago in 2023/24, which was peak Guardiola-ball in England.

Even in his rocky debut season back in 2016/17, City still strung together more passes than they are doing now. What this tells us is that Guardiola’s City no longer live off sterile domination. They live off chaos, off transitions, off the breakneck pace of counterattacks.

And it seems to be working; as Manchester City have scored more goals on the counter than any other Premier League side this season, seeing Guardiola, the purist, become the opportunist.

Manchester City’s transfer policy reflects the shift

The extent of Guardiola’s transformation can be traced back to a single transfer: the arrival of Gianluigi Donnarumma. Guardiola always relied on Ederson as his auxiliary midfielder, a goalkeeper who treated the ball as comfortably as a number six.

With Donnarumma, he has a shot-stopper first and foremost, but not a playmaker. That choice said everything. From the moment Donnarumma joined, City’s goal-kicks became longer, build-up sequences became shorter, and Guardiola’s comfort with allowing opponents keep possession became obvious.

In addition to Donnarumma, Guardiola is no longer signing players purely for their technical ability; he is hunting for physicality and versatility.

Rayan Ait-Nouri brings athleticism and directness down the flank, Abdukodir Khusanov provides raw defensive strength and pace, while Tijjani Reijnders injects legs and dynamism into midfield, as one of the best two-way midfielders in Europe, and even Erling Haaland is wildly dissimilar to former forwards.

These players do not fit the mould of Pep’s old archetype, the pure technician. Instead, they are adaptable pieces who can thrive in the intensity of a more transitional, counterpunching City. It is evolution through necessity.

Guardiola has looked at the Premier League’s growing physical demands and concluded that the old way of playing, suffocating opponents with 70% possession, no longer guarantees dominance.

The irony is striking. After suffering the worst season of his Manchester City tenure last year, Guardiola seems to have concluded that fighting fire with fire is the only way forward. If everyone in the league is fitter, faster, and sharper, then City must be just as direct, just as ruthless, just as willing to scrap.

Guardiola’s hybrid Man City may be the ultimate solution

Yet beneath the pragmatism, there remains a lingering sense that Guardiola has not completely abandoned his attacking instincts, but he has shelved them until the right moment. Watching Manchester City now, there is an unpredictability about them, that they previously lacked.

They can sit deep and wait for the counter, or they can still flip a switch and pass teams to death when space opens up. This duality is perhaps Guardiola’s most radical innovation yet, one which many have criticised him for not adopting sooner.

Of course, such a shift comes with risks. Manchester City’s identity under Guardiola was built on control, on the idea that if you hold the ball, you cannot concede.

Now, with fewer passes per sequence and a heavier reliance on transitions, there is more jeopardy in every game. Matches feel looser, margins thinner. Supporters who became accustomed to City suffocating the life out of opponents now watch nervously as end-to-end exchanges unfold.

The question becomes whether Guardiola can sustain success playing a style that requires his team to surrender the very thing he once prized most: control.