High-profile exits, new signings, transfer u-turn - Man City must change things
Manchester City face an inquest after falling well short of Real Madrid in the Champions League, with a rebuild even more necessary in the summer.
Bernardo Silva pointed to some quite worrying errors Manchester City made at Real Madrid that will need urgent attention.
"We needed a different level of concentration in the simple things," he said at the Bernabeu. "We were nowhere near the level you need to be to have chances in these kinds of games." The game plan City arrived with, he said, was gone after the early goal they gave away.
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"We lost control of the game; we couldn’t press them properly or build-up in a safe way. We gave them the opportunity to run and to create chances. These guys don’t miss. If you’re not perfect in your passing or build-up play, you give them opportunities and they will punish you."
And then Bernardo went further.
Pep Guardiola spent 20 minutes in a recent press conference systematically picking apart his side's weaknesses this season from speed to age to physicality.
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“It’s difficult to keep the same team at the same level for a lot of years," echoed Bernardo this week. "We did that and we did that for a long time - hopefully next season we can come back to that level that we showed the people that we have.
"We’ve had a lot of important injuries which killed the momentum of the team a little bit and the confidence of the team went down. The injuries are not an excuse - we need to do much better and we will try to find the solution to be competitive again.
It's interesting to hear Bernardo mention confidence after City - led by Guardiola - have done so much to insist there is no confidence issue in the dressing room. The evidence is black-and-white, however.
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So if City are searching for that solution to close the gap to Real Madrid again - the benchmark for having a chance of winning the Champions League, or first the Club World Cup - then things will need to change before the start of next season.
City spent almost £200m in January to refresh the squad and boost numbers and the noises from the Etihad suggest the spending will continue in the summer. Trusted servants like Kyle Walker, Ilkay Gundogan and even Kevin De Bruyne could move on as their City careers come to a natural end.
And there are arguments, too, that the likes of Bernardo, Ederson and John Stones are coming to the end of their time at the club. Both Bernardo and Ederson have flirted with transfers in recent summers and this could be a last chance to recoup some value for them, while Stones' latest setback was a reminder that for all his talent he cannot be relied upon for any reasonable run of games.
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Mateo Kovacic and Matheus Nunes are others who may not have long-term futures and City probably wouldn't put up too much of a fight if they were to leave. And they must be ruthless with on-loan players like Walker and Kalvin Phillips to free up wages for new arrivals.
City's future looks promising, with the end of this season a chance to integrate the likes of Nico Gonzalez, Abdukodir Khusanov and Vitor Reis, as well as Omar Marmoush. Erling Haaland is here for the long run, and you'd expect Phil Foden is too. Josko Gvardiol has enjoyed a fine two years in Manchester, while Savinho is surpassing first-season expectations.
If there is ever a time to trust those young players it is now. After all, they are the ones who have stood out more than their more experienced teammates this season.
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Nico Gonzalez finally showed like City have identified their Rodri replacement so they must make sure they get his development right. Guardiola purred over Gonzalez's Premier League debut and he didn't disgrace himself at the Bernabeu.
Rodri will be back next season, but must be managed after such a long time out. City have struggled to play without him since September and can use the final three months of the season to work with Gonzalez as well as find a system where both he and Rodri can partner while also replacing each other.
Guardiola will never abandon his principles and his record suggests that is wise. But he has learned the hard way this season that the Premier League is becoming more physical and much faster. With one or two key cogs missing from his well-oiled machine, the whole thing has fallen apart.
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So will he wait for those cogs to return, develop others to replace them, or even buy new players to do the same job? Or will he work on tweaking his approach to adapt to a changing world where more games and more competition means a renewal in style and system may be in order.
The manager likes a small squad yet concedes he will need to u-turn on that long-held principle if the schedule results in more injuries like this season has produced. He is open to change, and as one of the game's most influential innovators, he will surely get the balance right when he has all of his players available.
For all the injuries, signings and everything else, there is only so much Guardiola can do from the sidelines. As Bernardo said, City handed the momentum to Madrid and made their mountainous task almost impossible, purely by their own basic errors.
Article continues belowFans can forgive absences and even a drop in form after so much winning. What they won't forgive is the same mistakes and a drop in effort.
So a straightforward change that can be made before the summer is to cut out those self-inflicted mistakes and give the club those difficult decisions to make.
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