The reporter reported coldly Since the Abu Dhabi consortium bought Manchester City in 2008/09, the Blues have gone through three eras of Roberto Mancini, Manlegrini and Pep Guardiola to become the undisputed dominance of the Premier League. In the meantime, Manchester City has experienced the metabolism of the main squad four times. Mancini, Manlegrini each experienced once, Pep Guardiola experienced once when he took office, and now he is experiencing his own painful second time. Compared with the planning and systematization of the previous three lineup iterations, this iteration of Manchester City is extremely hesitant, conservative and passive.

After a quiet summer window, with Rodri seriously injured and a massive injury in central midfield, Pep Guardiola and Begiristain had to rush to speed up in the winter window. Pep Guardiola overestimated the consistency of the squad and the form of the veterans. In the end, the fourth iteration of Manchester City's squad in the Abu Dhabi era was unprecedentedly scrambling, and naturally led to the worst performance of the Guardiola era.

Iterate decisively and without hesitation

Manchester City's previous three iterations of the lineup were all planned and systematic iterations with the full cooperation of the head coach and the sporting director. In the summer of 2008, before the Abu Dhabi consortium took over, it was deeply involved in the team's recruitment, with Given, Kompany, Zabaleta, Bridge, and Bellamy being the first generation of cornerstones of the Manchester City dynasty. Together with the subsequent acquisitions of Carlos Tevez, Bam Adebayo, Barry, Collo Toure, David Silva, Yaya Toure, Sergio Aguero and Nasri, they won the first Premier League title in the Abu Dhabi era for Manchester City, and Manchester City's team completely completed the first iteration of internationalization and superstardom.

The second iteration of Manchester City, which began in 2012 with the poaching of Barcelona executives Soriano and Begiristan, began to vigorously promote the Latinization of Manchester City.

In fact, the elimination of the first generation of veterans began in the summer of 2011, and with the addition of Fernandinho, Negredo, Keylor Navas, Kevin De Bruyne, Raheem Sterling and Otamendi, the main squad of the Pellegrini era was built. But City's second iteration was not perfect, with City winning the Premier League in 2013/14 with three points less than in 2011/12. Kevin De Bruyne, Raheem Sterling and Otamendi joined in 2015/16 and set a record for City's lowest points in seven seasons.

Manchester City's third iteration began in 2016 with Pep Guardiola's tenure, and the Spanish coach spent a total of more than 500 million euros in two seasons to bring in Stones, Sane, Gundogan, Jesus, Laporte, Mendy, Walker, B, and Ederson, basically completing the core framework of Manchester City's dominance of the Premier League in recent years, and at the same time, it also basically eliminated the former redundant personnel in two seasons. When Pep Guardiola won his first Premier League trophy in 2017/18, Edson Walker-Gundogan-De Bruyne B was already the main centre. Subsequently, Rodri's addition completely stabilized this central axis, which lasted for 7 seasons.

It wasn't until the summer of 2022 that Haaland joined that Guardiola started his fourth metabolism since taking charge. Although he eliminated Raheem Sterling, Gabriel Jesus, Zinchenko, Fernandinho and Cancelo that year, the iteration progress unexpectedly stretched for two seasons before it was completed.

Akanji, Gvardiol and Mateo Kovacic filled in the midfield, Doku and Nunez strengthened the attack, but the core of Edson Stones-Walker-Gundogan De Bruyne did not have any superstar replacement of comparable quality. When he failed to find a new talent, Guardiola let go of Mahrez, Phillips, Gundogan, Laporte, and Palmer, who should have stayed in the team to focus on development. With the signing of the little-known Saviño in the summer window last year, and the loss of Alvarez in the first team continued, Guardiola's conservative and hesitant iteration in order to maintain the title competitiveness as much as possible cost Manchester City dearly.

The winter window is speeding up, and the sheep are repaired

Manchester City's previous three metabolisms have been active and planned, especially in the first two seasons of Guardiola's tenure, he quickly built his core team to dominate the Premier League.

However, a one-point narrow victory over Liverpool to defend the Premier League title for two consecutive seasons has made Guardiola realise that the need for iteration is imminent. He wanted to push for the fourth iteration with Haaland as the core, but winning the Champions League made him make a mistake in continuing to maintain the championship team, causing the iteration with Haaland as the core to be artificially delayed. Last summer, it should have been in the attacking midfield, midfield, winger and full-back positions in the step-by-step iteration, and finally only signed the Brazilian winger Savigno of the satellite club Girona and Gundogan, who had aged for one year, but let go of Alvarez, an important firepower point in the front line, and in the end, Rodri, who had been in office for almost four seasons, was finally overwhelmed with serious injuries, De Bruyne was already in a career decline, coupled with general injuries in the defensive line. The second iteration of the Pep Guardiola era ended up paying a huge price for luck and overestimating the injury resistance of the "small squad".

Whether Pep Guardiola is at Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Manchester City, the team has never been in such a slump before. It is precisely because of the hesitation in the summer that both Manchester City and Pep Guardiola have to switch from active to passive in the fourth iteration of the team, from the planned gradual replacement of the main team in the summer to the rush to buy premium players in the winter window, and the second half of the season will be under the double pressure of new signings on the one hand and the team chasing points on the other.

Compared with building a complete lineup every time he took over before, this time the generation change, Gua Shuai is a little messed up. People tend to rely on the reliability of championship teams, but ignore Murphy's Law, which is more often a vicious circle of conservatism and luck.