Pep Guardiola: The stats behind his decade at Man City

After a decade in which he won 20 trophies, including six Premier League titles and a Champions League, Pep Guardiola is expected to step down as the manager of Manchester City this summer.

Although rivalries with Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool and Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal will live long in the memory, Guardiola’s time at the helm will ultimately be remembered for delivering the most successful period in City’s history. We look back at his tenure in charts.

It is often forgotten now, but at his time of appointment few expected Guardiola to last as long in Manchester. He had managed his beloved Barcelona for only four years and Bayern Munich for just three.

Fast forward ten years and he has been in charge of City for 591 games, 183 more than he recorded at Barcelona and Bayern combined.

Over the course of those seasons, he has taken City’s tally of Premier League titles from two to an impressive eight. Only Manchester United have lifted the trophy more often (13).

Although Guardiola has enjoyed an almost-endless run of success as City’s manager, it did not get off to the strongest start.

His side ended the 2016-17 campaign third in the Premier League, crashed out of the Champions League in the round of 16 and fell short in the domestic cup competitions. It remains the only time in his managerial career that Guardiola had failed to win a single trophy over the course of a season.

However, City’s fortunes changed dramatically in the following campaign.

In 2017-18, City became the only side to record 100 points across a single Premier League campaign and set a record for the competition’s biggest title-winning margin in the process (19 points).

That side, known as the “Centurions”, managed to win 18 games on the bounce between August and December 2017, a record that is yet to be surpassed in the Premier League era. That season, Guardiola’s men scored 106 Premier League goals — a record that still stands — and managed to register 32 wins, the first team to do so.

This achievement helped lift the standard with regard to winning a Premier League title. The intense rivalry between City and Liverpool over the next few seasons led to them both surpassing that previous points record set by Chelsea back in 2005 (95 points).

Guardiola’s men followed up their 100-point season with a domestic Treble in 2018-19: the league, the FA Cup and the League Cup.

This period under Guardiola will be remembered for City’s stranglehold on the League Cup. They managed to lift the trophy four times in succession (2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21), equalling Liverpool’s four-in-a-row from 1980-81 to 1983-84.

After the bitter disappointment of losing to Chelsea in the Covid-affected Champions League final in 2021, City only had to wait two years to feature at this stage again.

City beat Inter Milan 1-0 at the Ataturk Stadium in June 2023, securing their first Champions League title after going unbeaten in the competition that season (W8, D5).

Rodri’s 68th-minute winner also resulted in City becoming only the second English side to win a continental Treble (domestic title plus winning the main domestic and European cup competitions), after United in 1998-99. Overall, it was only the tenth such example in men’s European football history.

Guardiola’s triumph in Turkey meant he became the first manager to win the continental Treble with two different clubs, having previously achieved this feat with Barcelona in the 2008-09 campaign.

City followed their historic 2022-23 season by winning the Uefa Super Cup (v Sevilla, August 2023) and the Fifa Club World Cup in December 2023. They finished the 2023-24 season as Premier League champions, becoming the first men’s side in English football history to win four top-flight titles in a row.

Last season was, however, a down-year for City, as they posted their lowest points tally in the league under Guardiola (71).

City have bounced back with a domestic double (League Cup and FA Cup) this season in what is now expected to be Guardiola’s final campaign. Their victory over Arsenal at Wembley was Guardiola’s fifth League Cup win, the most recorded by any manager. City also became the first side to appear in four FA Cup finals in succession, beating Chelsea last weekend to lift the trophy for a third time under him.

A testament to Guardiola’s dominance is that, excluding the Etihad, the stadium he managed at most frequently was Wembley (26 times). In fact, he was involved in twice the number of fixtures there than he did at the next-placed venue (Old Trafford and St James’ Park, both 13).

A curious trend was Guardiola’s inability to get results at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, as he suffered six defeats there (W3, D1).

Assessing how he did against his counterparts, the Catalan seemed to struggle against a couple of German managers.

City lost more games than they won against Liverpool under Jürgen Klopp when Guardiola was in charge (W6, D8, L8).

One man who will be pleased to see the back of Pep will be Sean Dyche, as he faced off against Guardiola on 20 occasions in the top-flight but failed to win any of them (D2, L18). Although it is the present Fulham head coach, Marco Silva, who has the worst win-rate against Guardiola’s City, losing all 15 of their encounters.

Guardiola took a liking to sides wearing claret and blue during his time at City, going unbeaten against West Ham United (W18, D4) and Burnley (W19, D1).

In total, 111 players have been used by Guardiola during his time at the Etihad. Bernardo Silva has recorded 458 appearances across this span, 77 more than anyone else.

Erling Haaland, unsurprisingly, has scored the most goals of any player under Guardiola at City (161).

Something fans will remember this period for will be the way in which Guardiola got his teams playing, specifically their determination to seize control of the ball. With this in mind, it is unsurprising that since Guardiola arrived in the Premier League, the eight highest seasonal possession figures have all been recorded by his club.

Another tactical element the Catalan brought to the Premier League was the sight of midfielders such as Oleksandr Zinchenko, Nico O’Reilly, Fabian Delph and even Bernardo Silva being deployed at left back. Zinchenko started more games at the position under Guardiola in the league than anybody else (57).

Big-name signings have been synonymous with the past ten years at City. Transfermarkt announced this year that Guardiola has spent more than €2billion (about £1.7billion) on players during his time at the club. That is almost twice the number of the next-placed manager (Diego Simeone).

According to footballtransfers.com, however, City rank sixth for the highest net spend on transfers across the past five years among teams in the Premier League.

Fans will look back at this period for the relentless pace of success enjoyed by the blue half of Manchester. It is therefore unsurprising that, this season, Guardiola reached the milestone of 400 wins as a manager in the English top-flight, getting there in only 569 games — a record.

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