Are the demands of challenging at the top every season finally catching up to Man City? | OneFootball

The task of challenging at the top season after season is something Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola is all too familiar with, having led the club to four consecutive Premier League titles.

City are the only team in history to achieve that feat, but the demands of continually challenging for multiple prizes is certainly not getting any easier.

Saturday’s 2-1 defeat to Bournemouth was perhaps the first real sign of significant cracks beginning to show in the relentless winning machine that is Guardiola’s City.

The Spaniard lamented his side’s failure to match Bournemouth’s intensity and fight in the loss at the Vitality Stadium in what was a display that was unusually lacking creativity and quality. Antoine Semenyo opened the scoring in the first half before Evanilson added another after the break, and despite Josko Gvardiol pulling one back late on, it was a deserved defeat for the reigning champions who were second best.

City’s success has come with the cost of more games, which has in turn led to more injuries. Kyle Walker, Manuel Akanji and Nathan Ake were among the starters who Guardiola revealed were far from being fully fit against Bournemouth.

“If we had five more days to recover, prepare, maybe we would have been better, or maybe not. Who knows?” Guardiola said after the defeat.

“The reality we are living now, we lived in the past in previous seasons when we played a lot of games.

“Maybe if we arrive in the final stages of the Club World Cup, we will play about 70 games. 70 games is like the NBA (National Basketball Association) but the NBA has four-month holidays, and we have three weeks.

“We’ve had some injuries for a long time which didn’t happen before but it’s inevitable, it’s normal, it’s going to happen. You have to handle it and be perfect with how many training sessions you have to do to arrive as best as possible in the game.

“This is what it is, we cannot practise, but it’s the same like in the previous seasons.”

Guardiola did not seem overly concerned about his side’s physical challenges but the evidence on show on Saturday is certainly a cause for concern.

The reigning champions, usually so adept at controlling games with their relentless possession before killing teams off, were exposed time and time again on the fast break by Bournemouth’s electric front four of Marcus Tavernier, Justin Kluivert, Semenyo and Evanilson.

Semenyo was the best of the bunch, producing a brilliant turn and finish for the opener after being picked out by Milos Kerkez, who later notched his second assist of the game after being fed down the left by Semenyo to pick out Evanilson in the middle.

This was the fourth time City have conceded the first goal in a game this season but, prior to this defeat, they had gone on to win their previous 11 games when they have conceded first.

Bournemouth deserve huge credit for bucking this particular trend, but the hurdles that need to be overcome means winning a fifth straight title could well be one of Guardiola’s biggest challenges yet.