The story of Pep Guardiola’s 10 years at Man City in 10 matches

Pep Guardiola brought up one more record before leaving the Etihad Stadium as Manchester City manager for the last time on Sunday.

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The Catalan tactician led City for a 593rd match in a sun-drenched 2-1 defeat to Aston Villa, putting him one ahead of Les McDowell in the all-time standings. 

McDowell was City’s manager between 1950 and 1963, winning the 1956 FA Cup. But the football schedule was not so relentless in those days, something that has allowed Guardiola to edge ahead in the space of 10 seasons.

“Listen, this job is every few days for many, many years, » Guardiola said at his pre-match press conference for the Villa game. «Selhurst Park, Anfield, Madrid and Madrid and FA Cup and brrrr…. and now I have to live my life and see what happens.

“Ten years is a lot of time, and I think the club needs a new manager, new energy with these incredible players that we have right now, and start to write another chapter.”

Guardiola’s whole book at City has been expertly detailed from multiple angles since news of his departure was firmed up at the start of this week. The tales of the greatest triumphs were regaled in gushing detail for fans to feast upon.

Here, we will try to tell the story of Guardiola’s 10 years in Manchester through 10 games – one from each season – and, for the most part, avoid the obvious ones, hopefully shining a light on the key building blocks of a footballing dynasty along the way.

MORE: For the first time, the result did not matter to Pep Guardiola and Man City’s eternal heroes

Pep Guardiola’s 10 years at Man City in 10 matches

2016/17: Manchester City 2-2 Tottenham (January 21, 2017)

The English winter bit hard in Guardiola’s first Premier League season. After leading City to 10 wins in their first 10 matches across all competitions, the turbulence their manager anticipated hit. This was a mismatched squad feat new signings adapting to a new league and an ageing core that had seen better days. The slump deepened alarmingly, though, as City conceded four goals apiece in damaging defeats at Leicester and Everton.

At Leicester, Guardiola made his infamous «I am not a coach for the tackles» comment, and the idea of a footballing pioneer being brought to heel by the Premier League was growing in appeal. After losing 4-0 at Goodison Park, Mauricio Pochettino’s in-form Tottenham came to Manchester. As he would do so often at times of high stress over the decade to come, Guardiola decided it was no time to compromise.

During City’s mid-season slump, Guardiola cycled through several different formations as he sought to crack the code of English football, culminating in an ill-fated midfield diamond featuring much-loved veteran full-back Pablo Zabaleta during the Everton defeat. For the visit of Spurs, Guardiola returned to a pure Barcelona 4-3-3, with Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva in the central attacking midfield positions and flying wingers Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling on either side of Sergio Aguero. Never mind that Yaya Toure, somewhat more glacial than in his pomp, had to anchor the midfield on his own, or that three of the back four in front of a haphazard Claudio Bravo were Roberto Mancini-era full-backs.

Those were problems for the summer as Guardiola decided to groove the attack that would decimate the competition in 2017/18. In the Spurs game itself, Sane and De Bruyne gave City a 2-0 lead early in the second half before Dele Alli and Son Heung-min preyed upon defensive frailties to earn a share of the spoils. But Guardiola had reignited a team at a low ebb. The Tottenham game began an 11-match unbeaten run across all competitions. Something was brewing.

2017/18: Manchester City 7-2 Stoke City (October 14, 2017)

Bolstered by a lavish but very smart summer 2017 transfer window that added future club greats Ederson, Kyle Walker and Bernardo Silva, City laid waste to the Premier League record books as they racked up 100 points on an imperious march to glory.

Guardiola emphatically ended the argument grounded in English exceptionalism that his style would not work over here. In statistical terms alone, it worked better than anything ever had. The jousts with Jurgen Klopp’s great Liverpool team were about to commence and, as we saw in later years, Guardiola’s influence and the subsequent reaction to his style have laid down some of the most taxing tactical challenges of his career.

But as City hit full speed in 2017/18, no one – Klopp aside – appeared to have any idea what to do with them. At times, they might as well have been playing football from a different planet or another sport entirely. The seven-goal evisceration of Mark Hughes’ Stoke felt like the high watermark of this.

Gabriel Jesus’ opening goal came after right-back Walker made an underlapping run to cut the ball back from the corner of the six-yard box. What was he doing there? A couple of moments later, Stoke had six players defending their box against four City attackers, only for De Bruyne to play an utterly ridiculous reverse pass. Sane, Sterling, 2-0. After Stoke had the audacity to pull back a couple of goals to make the score 3-2 early in the second half, City went nuclear.

De Bruyne appeared to be having his own personal assist of the season competition, an audacious cross for Jesus’s second topped by an unfathomable pass to Sane for City’s sixth. Those goals came either side of Fernandinho clattering into the top corner from range and before Bernardo’s first goal for the club. Goal of all shapes and sizes from all angles rained down. As they did, career midfielder Fabian Delph enjoyed his first home Premier League start as an inverted left-back and already looked part of the furniture.

2018/19: Manchester City 3-1 Manchester United (November 11, 2018)

The anticipated, dominant narrative of Guardiola’s time at City was a renewal of hostilities with Jose Mourinho. Following the pair’s epic Clasico battles at Barcelona and Real Madrid, Mourinho arrived across town at Manchester United to succeed Louis van Gaal. Although Guardiola largely got the better of their rivalry, the fact he stood down and took a year’s sabbatical after Madrid won La Liga in 2011/12 gave enough credence to the theory that Pep had been «driven out of town».

A derby victory at Old Trafford in September 2016, only made competitive by Bravo’s slapstick debut in goal, laid down an early marker for where all of this was headed before both men struggled in the Premier League that season. Mourinho won the League Cup and Europa League, though, and Guardiola finished the season trophyless. 

The 2017/18 campaign was a different story. Mourinho talked up United’s distant second-place finish and Red Devils supporters rightly revelled in the 3-2 comeback victory at the Etihad Stadium in April 2018 that stopped City from securing the title at their rivals’ direct expense. But the gap was a chasm.

When United arrived at Eastlands in November 2018, Mourinho was a month away from the sack. City tore into them mercilessly as David Silva found an early breakthrough. Their old tormentor Aguero rifled home a trademark finish for his ninth and final Manchester derby goal. The game drifted a little, and Anthony Martial reduced the arrears from the penalty spot. That roused City to finish matters with a little Guardiola masterpiece – a 44-pass move concluded by Ilkay Gundogan’s close-range finish.

Guardiola had put the Mourinho debate beyond doubt. But another, seemingly never-ending argument had only just begun. The week of the 177th Manchester derby, Der Spiegel published a series of articles based on information obtained by the whistleblower FootballLeaks that alleged widespread financial malpractice at City. The club has always strenuously denied the allegations, but they became the discordant background noise, the ever-present «gotcha», of the Guardiola era.

2019/20: Real Madrid 1-2 Manchester City (February 26, 2020)

After investigating allegations that Manchester City disguised owner investment as sponsorship revenue, UEFA banned the club from their competitions for two years on February 14, 2020. Happy Valentine’s Day. City successfully appealed that punishment at the Court of Arbitration for Sport late that year, but the matter continues to rumble via the interminable wait in the Premier League’s so-called 115 case against City.

Guardiola has used the matter as a rally point for a siege mentality at various points, most notably when the Premier League charge sheet dropped in February 2023. In some respects, it proved to be the fuel for the treble run. Three years before that, though, City went to one of the grandest institutions in European football as pariahs, at a stadium where their manager was utterly loathed.

This last-16 tie with Real Madrid is largely forgotten, in part because the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic separated both legs, and also because City and Madrid played out two seismic semifinals in 2022 and 2023. But their performance at the Santiago Bernabeu, at a time when Liverpool were running away with the Premier League and the walls seemed to be closing in off the pitch, was exceptional.

Guardiola dropped one of those head-scratching Champions League team sheets that you only remember when they go wrong. He set City up in a sort of 4-4-2-0 formation. De Bruyne and Bernardo played as dual false nines, with Jesus and Riyad Mahrez tearing up and down the flanks. It was a template that worked to perfection in the Carabao Cup semifinals at Old Trafford the previous month and foreshadowed some of the solutions Guardiola found during the 2020/21 season.

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City dominated for an hour, perplexing Zinedine Zidane’s side, but fell behind to an Isco goal. Guardiola then switched up to a more conventional 4-3-3 as a fit-again Sterling came off the bench to feast on a tiring Dani Carvajal. De Bruyne’s prints were typically all over the comeback as he crossed for Jesus’ clever headed finish and dispatched a penalty after Carvajal sent Sterling tumbling. It was a showing of defiance by which Guardiola likes to measure his best teams.

2020/21: Chelsea 1-3 Manchester City (January 3, 2021)

Struggles on the football pitch during the behind-closed-doors weirdness of the 2020/21 paled next to the real-world tolls of the coronavirus pandemic that touched us all. Guardiola’s mother Dolors Sala died after contracting COVID-19 in April 2020. «I remember losing my mum during COVID and feeling this club carry me through it,» Guardiola recalled in his farewell address last week. «The fans, the staff, the people of Manchester, you get me strength when I needed it most.»

On the field, a shambolic 5-2 defeat to Leicester in their first home game of the season showed City to be still reeling from their painful Champions League quarterfinal defeat to Lyon, very much the nadir of Guardiola «overthink». Ruben Dias’ arrival from Benfica improved the defence and his partnership with John Stones resuscitated the England international’s City career.

They were still missing something, though, most notably in attack, where Aguero was in the midst of a fitness nightmare that would bring the end of his City career that summer. For a New Year’s trip to Chelsea, Guardiola went for another of his undiluted moves. The visitors lined up with a rotating cast of false nines. Bernardo, De Bruyne and Gundogan all filled the central attacking role to leave Chelsea all at sea. Gundogan scored a fabulous opener and Phil Foden and De Bruyne got in on the act before halftime. Gundogan finished the season as Premier League top scorer for the champions.

Guardiola left himself an unexploded grenade, though. Such a chastening loss moved Frank Lampard close to the Stamford Bridge exit door. By the end of the month, Thomas Tuchel had replaced him. City played Chelsea three times in six weeks towards the end of the season, Guardiola tied himself in knots and City lost the Champions League final in Porto. 

2021/22: Liverpool 2-2 Manchester City (October 3, 2021)

The two games from this incredible rivalry that get the most plaudits are Liverpool’s 4-3 victory at Anfield in January 2018, which inflicted a first Premier League defeat on Guardiola’s juggernaut that season and set the terms for all that was to follow, and City 2-1 Liverpool in January 2019, a knife-edge contest of relentless quality that stood as the 2018/19 title race in microcosm

But the 2021/22 matches, within another relentless march to the finish line that also fell in City’s favour on the last day, were at least equal to those games, if not better. The fact that they both finished 2-2 and lacked a decisive result is maybe why they don’t endure to the same extent.

The draw at Anfield felt like a leap forward for Guardiola at a stadium that tormented him. City dominated before halftime. Foden made a compelling case for James Milner to retire and Bernardo led the opposition midfield a merry dance. As they always did in these games, Liverpool bit back. Mohamed Salah played in Sadio Mane for a superb opener before scoring a majestic solo goal himself.

But City equalised twice, first through Foden and then a deflected De Bruyne strike. On the second of those goals, Guardiola howled manically into the Merseyside sky. On a ground where he’d seen his men collapse under suffocating pressure from Klopp’s brilliant team and a baying crowd in three times across 2018 and 2019, they had endured and did so right up until Rodri’s incredible goalmouth block from Fabinho in stoppage time.

2022/23: Manchester City 4-0 Real Madrid (May 17, 2023)

Okay, so this is the obvious pick. The fullest realisation of Guardiola’s vision at City came with the added bonus of the former Barcelona ballboy getting to watch the great enemy Real Madrid torn to shreds. 

The teams met in the Champions League semifinals 12 months early. City dominated Madrid but could not shake them in the first leg in Manchester, winning 4-3. Mahrez’s excellent 73rd-minute finish during an assured second-leg display at the Santiago Bernabeu meant City had one foot in the final, but then the roof fell in. Rodrygo scored twice in a scarcely believable period of stoppage time and Karim Benzema settled the tie from the penalty spot in extra time. It spoke volumes of the mental fortitude Guardiola built inside the City dressing room that they were able to reset and edge out Liverpool in the Premier League.

In 2023, Vincius Jr. and De Bruyne exchanged fabulous first-leg goals to leave the teams all square heading to the Etihad. But City had hit a rare vein of form. The 2022/23 treble winners weren’t Guardiola’s best team overall, but they were his best for six weeks when it mattered. During that time, Liverpool, Bayern Munich and Arsenal were all battered at Eastlands, but no one suffered like Real Madrid did that night.

Carlo Ancelotti’s Champions League specialists were suffocated, unable to get out, Bernardo Silva and Jack Grealish pinning them back out wide, leaving Madrid to be sliced apart through midfield, where John Stones was having the time of his life roving forward from centre-back. Erling Haaland was brilliant without scoring and Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois was their best player on the night by a mile. Bernardo scoring both first-half goals, the player who embodied Guardiolisme on the pitch more than any other, was the most perfect detail on a perfect night.

2023/24: Manchester City 3-1 Manchester United (March 3, 2024)

It’s a little strange to have two Manchester derbies on this list, given one of the few consistent grumbles City fans have about the Guardiola decade is a relatively poor return against United. The Blues have had the better derby record and finished above United in every one of his seasons at the club, but there was the 3-2 loss from 2-0 up, that denied the ultimate bragging rights of winning the title at the Red Devils’ expense. And the limp 2024 FA Cup final defeat to miss out on a domestic double. Guardiola lost four times in nine derbies against Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

But this game stands out because it was the Manchester match won by the Manchester boy at his magical best. Phil Foden had always been Guardiola’s special project. Txiki Begiristain flagged the effortlessly dazzling Stockport boy to Pep on his arrival, and he was an unused substitute against Celtic in the Champions League as a 16-year-old. Every City fan was so invested in watching him blossom, from those exciting first senior appearances to a man-of-the-match showing in the 2020 Carabao Cup final and becoming a star turn in the 2020/21 title-winning side.

But the boy wonder always had great men around him. They’ve all gone now and he must step forward again next season, perhaps liberated because Guardiola’s arm around the shoulder also came with a looming shadow. But the 2023/24 season showed Foden is capable of carrying a great team on his back. He was named PFA and FWA Player of the Year for performances like this one.

Another Mancunian, Marcus Rashford, put United ahead with a screamer against the run of play. City toiled in pursuit of an equaliser before Foden cut inside to unleash a venomous strike into the top corner after 56 minutes. With De Bruyne battling his body and short of his best, Foden was everywhere, scheming relentlessly before he conjured a game-breaking goal 10 minutes from time. The lad from Stockport had played the Manchester derby of his childhood dreams.

#OnThisDay last year, #ManCity were 1-0 down in the Manchester derby, then Phil Foden did this… pic.twitter.com/xENwLd4DoK

— City Report (@cityreport_) March 3, 2025

2024/25: Bournemouth 1-2 Manchester City (March 30, 2025)

In City’s abject 2024/25 campaign, the rot set in when they lost 2-1 to Andoni Iraola’s effervescent Bournemouth in early November. By the time they returned to England’s south coast for an FA Cup quarterfinal, Guardiola had patched things back together in a very Guardiola way: everyone, as many people as possible, were going to play in central midfield.

This led to some stodgy fare at times, and City did not look in great shape at the interval at the Vitality Stadium: 1-0 down and short on ideas after Haaland ballooned a penalty over the crossbar. Enter Nico O’Reilly. 

The latest breakthrough star from City’s academy had shown flashes of his vast talent since joining the first-team squad in the summer of 2024. He was a goalscoring No. 10 at youth level, so of course Guardiola turned him into a full-back. O’Reilly came on at left-back at Bournemouth and changed the game, providing assists for Haaland and Omar Marmoush. He hasn’t left the position since and stands as the final, thrilling evolution of Guardiola’s full-back experiments in Manchester. He will probably start for England at the 2026 World Cup.

At full-time, Guardiola was particularly animated and enthused as he applauded City’s travelling supporters. A man impassionately determined to see through the rebuild and hand over his club on an upward trajectory.

2025/26: Arsenal 0-2 Manchester City (March 22, 2026)

This season has been uneven at City. A haul of 79 points was never going to win the Premier League, even as pragmatism limited Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal. They threw away far too many points from winning positions. But they are a young, developing team, hastily thrown together at no little expense. The Carabao Cup final against Arsenal showed the heights they might be able to climb, Guardiola having pointed the way for them. 

City headed to Wembley in the unusual position of underdogs in March, probably for the first time since Roberto Mancini’s celebrated team beat Manchester United 1-0 in the 2011 FA Cup semifinal. James Trafford made a fine triple save early on, but City gradually asserted control. After a goalless first half, the 20 minutes after the restart were pure, classic Guardiola. Arsenal could not get out, City got to every second ball and their opponents had to yield. O’Reilly scored both goals, the Manchester lad sparking pandemonium among the Mancunians behind the goal. Antoine Semenyo tore at Piero Hincapie over and over, and Rayan Cherki dazzled with effortless cheek. New heroes were beginning to write their stories.

On reflection, this feels like the game that told Guardiola more than any other that he could walk away. He had the March international break to reflect upon a team renewed and revitalised, knowing he could walk away from English football as a trophy-winner once more.

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