Update: Man City battering had Pep Guardiola doubting his future – but £250m spending spree changed it all News

As Manchester City travel to Goodison Park for the final time, Pep Guardiola will remember his first visit to Everton that changed everything for him at the Etihad.

An ageing squad clinging on to a fading Premier League title bid. Pep Guardiola trying in vain to implement some new ideas. Key players injured or missing. Sound familiar?

As Guardiola takes Manchester City to Goodison Park for the final time, he may reflect on his first visit to the more traditional corner of Stanley Park that ended in a title concession as early as January. It even had him fearing the sack, wondering it his style wasn’t suited for English football after all.

Guardiola’s first season saw him inherit Manuel Pellegrini’s good squad with a brief to turn them into regular title winners and European contenders. Eight years on and the mission has been achieved and then some – but in January 2017 there were clear signs that money needed to be spent to get there and some important figures to move on.

Having led the table with 23 points from ten games, Guardiola looked to be taking the Premier League in his stride. After 20 games however, City were fifth as Chelsea took control of the title race. Defeat at Everton left City ten points behind and Guardiola conceding the title before winter had finished.

Nowadays, City would scoff at a ten-point deficit and half the season to go. But Guardiola knew his squad didn’t have the belief to win a third Premier League title. The following season, he told his expensively-assembled new-look dressing room that the only difference between City and Real Madrid or Barcelona was that the Spanish giants believed they could reach the top. He knew there was a mental issue but first he needed the players.

Maybe Goodison Park was the spark of the successes to come. Even if a 4-0 humbling and Guardiola’s worst-ever domestic defeat as manager won’t have felt like that at the time.

Imagine the headlines the following day, gleefully revelling in Guardiola’s fancy tactics getting unpicked by the superior Premier League. Romelu Lukaku bulldozed City that day at a ground Guardiola described this week as uncomfortable, still able to remember the details of that unexpected battering.

“In so many games we create enough chances but when they arrive they score and the second time they arrive they score,” Guardiola said after the game, before adding that City’s title hopes were over. “Yes. Ten is a lot of points.”

He went further, telling his players to unite “in the bad moments” and “forget the table” until the end of the season. He added: “At the end of the season, we are going to evaluate our level and how our performance was, how the coach was, how the players were. After that we are going to decide.

“I said to the players be positive because you made some fantastic things during the season and for many reasons we didn’t get what I think we deserved. In the bad moments we have to be close. It’s awful for my players. We created chances but don’t score and when they have a chance, they punish us.”

It sounded like an end-of season final or semi-final loss, not a league game with 17 games remaining. But the warning signs were clear – Vincent Kompany was injured and Fernandinho suspended while new signings like John Stones were struggling. In fact, Alan Shearer tore into Stones on Match of the Day that night.

“John Stones did have a nightmare. He is 22 now, he has played nearly 100 Premier League games and everyone keeps saying to me and to the rest of the football world, that he is going to be a top player,” Shearer analysed. “If I’m a centre forward, a young guy and I keep on missing chances, I don’t expect to be in the team. Eventually you are going to get left out. I keep seeing Stones making mistakes too often, too many times.”

The team sheet told its own story, too. Pablo Zabaleta was in defensive midfield, Raheem Sterling at number eight, Kevin De Bruyne next to Sergio Aguero in attack. And of the back five that started at Goodison that day, three were replaced that summer. Ederson, Kyle Walker, Benjamin Mendy and Danilo arrived for Claudio Bravo, Bacary Sagna and Gael Clichy, while substitutes Aleksandar Kolarov, Willy Caballero, Jesus Navas and Kelechi Iheanacho left as well.

Bernardo Silva was another to arrive in the summer of 2017, with Phil Foden promoted to the first team and Aymeric Laporte later signed in January 2018. City opened the chequebook for Guardiola after the shortcomings of his first season, spending over £250m in the process. The old guard were moved on and Txiki Begiristain rebuilt the squad with a focus on playing out from the back.

Draw your own comparisons with this season’s struggles, and Guardiola reflected on that first Goodison trip this week ahead of his last. “Sometimes we lose games, it was a good lesson,” he accepted on Friday. “I know how difficult Ronald Koeman made it in that moment, Lukaku had a good game.

“But never is a [single] game that dictates who we are or what we have to do. Never. The decisions are made in the training sessions and dressing room and games and games and games. Not just a specific game. That game we lost but we didn’t lose much in the Premier League these years.”

However Guardiola admitted in 2018 that the Everton battering had him doubting whether his methods would work in the Premier League.

“Sometimes what I felt was I’m going to try and if it doesn’t work I’ll go home, someone else can come and try in his way,” he reflected 12 months later. “In that moment there was concern about the result and what we can do to improve.

“Of course, I thought it could happen that it doesn’t work but at the same time, I thought that if next season did not go well and was the same then Txiki [Begiristain] or Ferran [Soriano] or the people would decide and say ‘OK Pep, you are not good enough with the players to do what you can do and we will change’. It was not a big problem.”

Whatever the real impact of that forgetful day on Merseyside, it may go down as one of the most important of City’s 99 previous visits to Goodison Park. Guardiola learned more about his squad and the Premier League in 90 minutes than much of the season that had gone before it.

City were persuaded to spend big on players who suited the manager’s system and they have a bulging trophy cabinet to show for it. They will be immensely grateful that Guardiola didn’t follow up on those doubts.

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