How last year’s has-beens Manchester City are bridging the gap back to Champions League elite | OneFootball

For Josko Gvardiol, the best of years was the worst of years.

He was driven to sleepless nights by Manchester City’s failings, even as they also gave him many an evening off. The Croatian joined a team who had just won the Champions League. When he won City’s player-of-the-season prize, however, it was for a campaign when City exited the competition before Lille and Club Brugge, PSV Eindhoven and Feyenoord. They had come 22nd in the group stage, on course for elimination then with 45 minutes of it with remaining. They did not even make the last 16.

“For me, it was the worst season so far I have done and I ever had in my career,” said Gvardiol. “It was painful. I remember last season I couldn't sleep in the nights because I was trying to find solutions and I was trying help the team and everyone in the club to get out of this position.”

The only way City extricated themselves from the Champions League was in the wrong respect: knocked out in February. A 3-1 loss to Real Madrid was their fourth defeat in as many trips, after being beaten by Sporting CP, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain. They gave up a 3-0 lead at home to Feyenoord to draw. Over the course of the campaign, Gvardiol was the pick of the bunch, but in Pep Guardiola’s worst ever Champions League campaign and City’s poorest since 2012-13.

“It is nice to get an award last season but still it did not make me happy because we struggled a lot,” added Gvardiol. “We won the Premier League in my first season and we were that close to winning the FA Cup. Last season, in the end, we have not won anything.”

This season may prove different. There is the immediate potential for improvement in one respect. Beat Bayer Leverkusen at the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday and City will have 13 points, two more than they got last season. So far, they have been denied the maximum only by Eric Dier’s 90th-minute penalty for Monaco. City have another trip to the Bernabeu, this time in December, but even if they lose that, beating Leverkusen, Bodo/Glimt and Galatasaray should put them on course to skip the knockout play-off round that brought their exit last year. They look on course for a top-eight finish in the league phase.

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City have only dropped points to Monaco in the league phase so far (AFP via Getty Images)

“I think we all see already, the situation at the club and the situation in the dressing room is much different and it is in a better way than last season,” added Gvardiol.

Thus far the defensive situation is rather better in Europe: City conceded 20 goals in their final seven Champions League games then. Now they have only been breached three times in their opening four matches.

It helps that they have had fewer injuries. Their investment of around £350m over the last two transfer windows has bought them a bigger squad, a younger team and more energy. Their better start to the Champions League has come without their band of Champions League winners: six of them left, either on loan or permanently, in the summer. A seventh, Rodri, will sit out the Leverkusen game. Mateo Kovacic, who won the competition with both Real Madrid and Chelsea, is a long-term absentee.

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A rejuvenated City side are on course for a top-eight finish (Getty Images)

It is a newer team. Only three of those who began Saturday’s defeat to Newcastle also started the 2023 final. The continuity has instead come in the dugout. Guardiola will bring up a century of Champions League games in charge of City on Tuesday.

“It’s quite good, it means that every season we have been there, the only team in England for the last 15 years, and hopefully next season we will be there too,” said the City manager. Which seems likely, barring a Premier League points deduction.

Guardiola’s Champions League record remains remarkable, as a three-time winner, but the City years contain more frustration than glory. “I’d say there are more disappointments than good moments,” he explained. “There have been good moments, especially in group stages, we have been top every season, except last season with the new format. But before it was always before one or two games were over [left] we have qualified. More the moments in quarter-finals or semi-finals, little margins, last minutes and decisions and decisions we can’t control, we are out.”

That may have been the City Gvardiol expected. The team who, to use a Guardiola-ism, were “always there”, always in the latter stages, always among the favourites, perennial nearly men before their 2023 triumph. Until last season, when they were nearly the men who did not even make the last 24, who left Gvardiol unable to drop off.

This year is an attempt to get them back to where they were. “At the beginning of this season, we talked about it and we don’t want to repeat something that happened last season,” said Gvardiol. Book that top-eight finish and they won’t.