Pep Guardiola
He is too dependent on a man
November 26, 2025 – 10:28 amReading time: 2 minutes
Manchester City loses to Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League. Coach Pep Guardiola then judges himself harshly, but leaves out one truth.
Erling Haaland, Phil Foden, Rúben Dias, Jérémy Doku, Bernardo Silva, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Matheus Nunes, Joško Gvardiol. The list of high-profile players who took their place on Manchester City’s bench on Tuesday was long. Coach Pep Guardiola rotated for the Champions League game against Bayer Leverkusen. He made ten changes compared to the league game against Newcastle United at the weekend. And that was noticeable.
The City team that Bayer Leverkusen faced in Manchester was noticeably thrown together. The English neither had the usual control of the game nor were they particularly grippy when the opponent had the ball. The pressing was – actually untypical for Pep Guardiola – weak. He himself took the blame for the 2-0 defeat that was determined at the final whistle. “It’s the first time in my life that I’ve done it. There were too many changes. It was my instinct – but I failed,” explained Guardiola.
His analysis: “I would like to swap all eleven, but I don’t have eleven substitutes. We have to do that, there are a lot of games and we need fresh legs.”
Even though Guardiola criticized the lack of squad depth, his team was worth twice as much as Leverkusen on Tuesday, if you believe the estimates from the “transfermarkt.de” portal. The City team that Guardiola sent onto the pitch put this at 454 million euros, and Bayer’s at 228 million.
So perhaps the reason for Manchester’s 2-0 defeat in the Champions League lies somewhere else. Maybe Pep Guardiola is simply too dependent on Erling Haaland this season. Because he was sitting on the bench for the first time in the premier class, having previously played in all games from the start. He also started every game in the Premier League.
While Haaland was responsible for half of all City goals in the Champions League so far (five out of ten), the number in the Premier League is even more drastic. 14 of the 24 goals scored were attributed to the striker. Two more on that of Burnley defender Maxime Estève, who scored two own goals in the duel against City. That means: Only 8 of the 24 league goals, a third, for the “Skyblues” were scored by another Manchester player.
So Pep Guardiola urgently needs to work on making his team more independent of Haaland. As good as it is to have the Norwegian with all his qualities in his own team, the successful coach must be aware that things have to work better without him.