The answer is obvious: This is the very first time that Pep Guardiola, the man the myth the legend, has had his congenital silver spoon jerked out of his mouth. In other words, the very first time in his storied, trophy-laden career that he has not been able to call upon a world-beating defensive midfielder.
In terms of entering football management with a silver spoon, only Zinedine Zidane comes anywhere near Pep Guardiola among modern-day managers. The former managed Real Madrid in two separate spells, got it just right, and hasn't done anything much else in football management. The latter, on the other hand, has managed to live long enough to see himself become the villain.
For a manager who has essentially had carte blanche at all of his jobs, it is perhaps unsurprising that Guardiola has dealt successfully with any and all player absences in his career so far. When Aguero was sold, he simply won the league with no striker - no mean feat, but made infinitely easier by having the likes of Gabriel Jesus, Raheem Sterling, Kevin de Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, and Riyad Mahrez to call upon. When Yaya Toure was sold to Man City, he simply replaced him with Javier Mascherano. When Kevin de Bruyne was injured for more than half a season, he simply replaced him with Bernardo Silva, Ilkay Gundogan, and Phil Foden.
But there is one footballing position where Guardiola has never been able to "troubleshoot":
The Defensive Midfielder.
There have been only two occasions in Pep Guardiola's managerial career where his defensive midfielder has been unavailable or subpar for a lengthy period of time. The first of these two was when Rodri was purchased to replace the aging legs of Fernandinho at Man City. Manchester City, it must be remembered, struggled quite badly with an aging Fernandinho. The second is right now, when Rodri's ACL injury has ruled him out for the whole season.
For a coach hailed by so many as a legend, an all-timer, even the GOAT, to depend so pathetically on such a unique, specialist position as Defensive Midfield defies belief. Remember, of course, that for all the noise around Kevin de Bruyne's injury, Manchester City have won a Premier League title before with Kevin de Bruyne basically being an absentee. Man City are not dependent upon de Bruyne. They are dependent upon Rodri.
Pep is not relying on a popular position to make his system work. He is relying on the nichest of niche positions. His own nichest of niche positions, as it happens - the position that he himself used to play (quite well, it must be said) in his playing days.
In other words, he is relying not on himself as a coach, but as a player. What he needs, what he so desperately craves, is a defensive midfielder who plays exactly like Guardiola himself used to play. Not just someone humble enough to want to play the unglamorous important role, but someone who has the intelligence to play it as well as Guardiola himself did.
Attacking Midfield / Forward is a glamor position. People grow up wanting to be an attacking mid. They score the goals, they get the spotlight.
Nobody grows up wanting to be a defensive midfielder, which is sad, but true nonetheless. The position has none of the glamor of attackers, even though it has more utility. Coaches may love their defensive mids, but fans live for the strikers.
In his first job at Barcelona, Guardiola had Sergio Busquets and Yaya Toure in the DM position, readymade when he arrived at the club. Then, at Bayern Munich, he had Xabi Alonso, Javi Martinez, and Philip Lahm either readymade or purchased by the club on his demand before his tenure had begun. Then, at Manchester City, he had Fernandinho readymade when he arrived, and has now purchased, not developed, Rodri. It is natural for a manager who used to play as a defensive midfielder to want a good defensive midfielder in his team, but Manchester City's last 12 games suggest that for Guardiola, his defensive midfielder IS his system.
"Give me myself", he says, "and I shall conquer the world".
The lingering doubts with Guardiola have never been about his success, or the way he wants football to be played. They have always been about his ability to actually coach a player into improving, to make a team better than the sum of its parts, to find solutions to problems that 99.999% of football coaches have to deal with every day but evade Guardiola because of the systemic advantages he has enjoyed right from the beginning.
Guardiola's teams have always been made of such stellar parts that even producing less than their sum has been enough to win most trophies. His time at Bayern Munich, where he joined the reigning European champions but never cracked Europe, and turned a flexible, multidimensional beast into a tame, predictable big fish in a small pond, is a stark reminder of this fact.
By going on a run of 9 losses in 12 games since Rodri got injured, Guardiola has done exactly nothing to dispel these doubts. He has highly successful as well as highly promising midfielders aplenty in his team, and yet every time the opposition spring a counterattack against Man City these days they seem sure to score.
Guardiola can fix all problems and win any trophy - as long as he has the world's best player in the nichest of niche postions, that is. Preferably with the world's best players in all the rest of the positions, of course.
This is a man, remember, who simply discarded Kalvin Phillips, a promising young DM by all accounts, as a lost cause. He had one of the world's best tier-2 defensive midfielders - he simply couldn't turn him into a tier-1 midfielder, a failure highlighted by the transformation by Arne Slot of Ryan Gravenberch into the world's best "number 6" this season - a position Gravenberch had never played before and didn't want to play until this season.
An honest Man City fan has made an argument to me that despite all the spending, despite all the institutional advantages, despite all the alleged corruption that Guardiola has benefited from, what sets him apart is his ability to consistently produce successful teams that also catch the eye, something that other coaches have not been able to deliver even with comparable levels of financial and institutional advantages. I was told to simply marvel at the beautiful white elephant, not to get caught up in the destructive underlying economics.
Manchester City's trainwreck run following Rodri's injury, however, raises questions as to the fundamental fragility of this white elephant, however beautiful and expensive it may be. If, even with essentially unlimited spending, (allegedly) fraudulent sponsorships, a manager who has won every trophy imaginable, and a squad that has literally won the last four league titles in a row, Guardiola's team goes down like a house of cards when one player - just ONE PLAYER - gets injured, that is hardly the mark of resilience. Of sustainability.
For reference, by the way, in the 2020-21 season, all three of Liverpool's senior central defenders had gotten injured by November, and for a while, Jürgen Klopp adjusted by playing two of his three first-choice midfielders as the two center-backs, essentially depriving him of FOUR first-choice players in their best positions. The midfielders were eventually restored to their preferred positions, but both center-back positions remained occupied by untested, unproven youth players for the rest of the season. Liverpool still ended up finishing third in the table that season. Man City, as things stand, are sixth.
Rodri's injury has exposed Guardiola's cluelessness in the face of actual adversity for the first time for the whole world to see. This is not a tortured genius against whom the gods conspire out of jealousy. This is not a master tactician who already knows how to solve problems before they arise. This is a one-trick pony whose one trick has, for the first time ever, been rendered null and void.
