Real Madrid inflicted Manchester City’s 13th defeat of the season in all competitions in Wednesday’s Champions League play-off second leg, the most ever for a team managed by Pep Guardiola.
Here, the PA news agency looks at Guardiola’s record and City’s season of struggle.
Unlucky 13
Guardiola has enjoyed a dominant career in management with Barcelona, Bayern Munich and City, winning 33 major trophies including league titles in 12 out of his 15 seasons prior to this one.
His Barca and Bayern teams never even reached double figures for defeats in a season, the most being Bayern’s nine in 2014-15 – one of which came in the relatively low-stakes German Super Cup, albeit against fierce rivals Borussia Dortmund.
His first season at City saw him experience 10 defeats for the first time in his career, with 4-0 losses to his former club Barca and then to Everton matching the heaviest of his career.
He returned to form with seven and then six defeats in the following two seasons before losing 12 in the Covid-disrupted 2019-20 campaign – four of those, including the FA Cup final to Arsenal and a Champions League humbling against Lyon, came after the season restarted in June.
Two seasons of eight defeats, seven in 2022-23 and just five last season yielded four successive league titles, an FA Cup, a League Cup and a Champions League title.
This season has been the worst of his illustrious career – his side have suffered more defeats already than the last two seasons combined, with a minimum of 17 games and potentially 24 still to play including this summer’s Club World Cup.
Season of struggle
The injury to key midfielder, and eventual Ballon d’Or winner, Rodri against Arsenal in September appeared significant at the time but few could have imagined the extent of its impact on City’s season.
They have lost 11 of 31 games since, or 35.5 per cent compared to Guardiola’s career average of 12.6 per cent. In Rodri’s City career, their win percentage falls from 74.1 per cent in games in which he has played some part to 52.1 per cent in his absence.
A prolonged slump between late October and Boxing Day saw City win just one out of 13 games and featured record losing runs for Guardiola of five straight games in all competitions and four in the league.
Five of their defeats have come in the Champions League – to Sporting Lisbon, Juventus and Paris St Germain in the league phase and then in both legs against Real.
Bournemouth, Brighton, Tottenham, Liverpool, Manchester United, Aston Villa and Arsenal have all enjoyed Premier League wins over City, with Spurs also knocking them out of the Carabao Cup.
Seven of the 13 losses have come by at least a two-goal margin, including 4-0 to Spurs and 5-1 to Arsenal in the league and 4-1 to Sporting.
