Where has it all gone right for Pep Guardiola's Man City? | OneFootball

Manchester City are widely regarded as one of the finest teams in world football at the moment and this Sunday, Pep Guardiola could finally get his hands on a first piece of English silverware to show for it.

And there’s a very good chance the Carabao Cup won’t be the last trophy captain Vincent Kompany will be holding aloft this season either.

Despite Monday night’s shock FA Cup exit at the hands of Wigan Athletic, City already have one foot and four toes in the Champions League quarter-finals and will probably – barring a catastrophic collapse – seal the Premier League title with a number of games to spare.

So after what was an underwhelming and trophy-less first season in the Etihad Stadium hot-seat, what exactly has Guardiola done to bring about such a dramatic reversal of fortunes this term?

Money changes everything

City’s vast outlay on players over the last 18 months isn’t the only reason for their brilliance at the moment, but it’s impossible to deny it’s been a big contributory factor.

As a recent report released by the CIES Football Observatory revealed, the €853 million spent on assembling City’s current squad makes it the costliest in the history of the game and spending that kind of money naturally comes with grand expectations.

But City aren’t the only club spending money out there and compared to some of their rivals, at least they can say they’ve spent theirs wisely.

To date, the only unsuccessful signings made on Guardiola’s watch have been Nolito and Claudio Bravo and were it not for the latter’s penalty shoot-out heroics, City might not be preparing for a Sunday’s trip to Wembley.

Every other acquisition made since the summer of 2016 has improved the team in some way and City’s record transfer fee still stands at a relatively modest £58.5m, which isn’t too bad for a club constantly forced to pay over the odds for players.

Money is no guarantee of anything in this game and this season, Guardiola has squeezed every last drop of potential out of his expensively assembled squad. That isn’t as easy as it looks.

A clean-ish bill of health

A bad workman always blames his tools but even Noah would probably have struggled to construct the ark with a broken screwdriver.

Injuries are part and parcel of the game and it’s impossible to make it through a season without suffering a few casualties along the way but at the very top level, it’s often the overall well-being of your squad which can make or break you.

Through a mixture of good fortune and clever investment in the club’s medical department, City have made it through this season with relatively few serious injuries to speak of thus far.

Kevin De Bruyne looked set for a lengthy spell on the sidelines when he was stretchered off in the dying minutes of December’s draw at Crystal Palace, only to seemingly defy medical science when he was named in the starting line-up against Watford just three days later.

And after an agricultural challenge damaged Leroy Sané’s ankle ligaments during January’s FA Cup win at Cardiff, the German spent barely any time at all out of service before miraculously returning to action five weeks ahead of schedule.

Even typically injury-prone players – such as Vincent Kompany and İlkay Gündoğan – have managed to keep themselves relatively fit this term, and City have been reaping the rewards.

That’s not to say they haven’t had their share of knocks, however. Gabriel Jesus has frustratingly found himself in and out of circulation this year while the anterior cruciate ligament injury sustained by Benjamin Mendy in September appeared to deal a hammer blow to his side’s season.

And the Frenchman’s performances in the five early-season appearances he made after joining from Monaco in the summer were impressive enough to make you wonder just how good City might have been if he hadn’t spent the last five months on crutches.

Leaders all over the pitch

As Guardiola has been at pains to stress on a number of occasions during his time in Manchester, he can commit as much time and effort as is humanly possible to preparing his players for matches during the week but once they cross that white line and the whistle blows, it’s over to them.

The Catalan is well aware he’s been blessed with one of the most talented groups of players in world football and his job has been made a great deal easier this season by the fact almost all of them have enjoyed career-defining seasons.

Kevin De Bruyne’s near-peerlessness in the Premier League will surely be reflected when the end-of-season awards are dished out, while the likes of Ederson, Nicolás Otamendi, Kyle Walker, Fernandinho, David Silva, Leroy Sané, Raheem Sterling and Sergio Agüero have all consistently been nothing short of superb.

But City’s success owes just as much to their collective mentality and proud work ethic as it does their skill on the ball.

Kompany’s unreliable calf muscle means he’s no longer able to wear the captain’s armband as often as he once did but City play with 11 skippers nowadays, and their appetite for victory is borderline insatiable.

For a number of years now, a nine-word fable has been painted one on of the walls at City’s state-of-the-art training facility.

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard,” it reads, and even on their off days, the last thing this team can be accused of is laziness.

These things take time

“I tried to convince them in all the meetings we had to come here, try to attack and score.

“My mistake was being not able to convince them to do that.”

Those were Guardiola’s words after his side were dumped out of the Champions League at the hands of Monaco last season and if City’s players really weren’t believers in the gospel according to Pep back then, they sure as hell are now.

Many expected miracles when the man from Santpedor first landed on English soil but last season proved that even a manager as talented and obsessive as Guardiola can’t always turn water into wine overnight.

City undoubtedly had their moments during his debut campaign and finished the season strongly, but they looked an altogether more fearsome proposition as they began his second pre-season and have been riding the crest of a wave ever since.

September’s 1-0 win away at Chelsea was something of a watershed moment for this team and since then, they’ve firmly established themselves as the country’s strongest outfit and it may be a while before they’re knocked off that particular perch.

City play to win and seek to dominate the ball every time they step onto the pitch and their brilliance is largely the result of hours and hours of work on the training ground.

His detractors called him a fraud whose style of play would never work in English football but 18 months down the line, it is the Premier League which must now find a way to adapt to Guardiola’s football, rather than the other way around.

There was never any danger of Guardiola losing his job at the end of his disappointing first term but the time and space he’s been given to solve the toughest equation of his managerial career to date should serve as a reminder that good things come to those who wait.