The devastating statistic that reveals Guardiola’s greatest weakness 

Pep Guardiola has unarguably taken the Premier League by storm. Manchester City has dominated English football as no team has ever before. Last season, his club amassed some outstanding stats.

Manchester City made history by becoming the first team in the Premier League era to get to 100 points, easily beating Chelsea’s haul of 95 points in 2004-05. City also broke the record for most wins (32), going past Conte’s total of 30 wins in the 2016-17 campaign. Some of the other historic numbers are impressive as well: biggest points margin, most goals and highest average possession among others.

What makes City a very strong contender for Premier League team of all time is the way they have carried their form into this season. They are still very much in contention for the once unimaginable ‘quadruple’ and remain on course to withstand one of the greatest title challenges in Premier League by Liverpool.

So we should just declare the mastermind behind the impossible, Pep Guardiola as the best coach in the modern era? Maybe not. It is said that your greatest challenges are encountered once you leave your home. That’s where Guardiola’s Achilles heel lies.

Taking into account City’s recent loss to Tottenham, Guardiola’s Champions League record is shocking and uncharacteristic of a man who has utterly dominated in domestic football. Pep has won only 6 games in his last 26 away games in the Champions League knockout stage. These 6 victories include wins against Bayer Leverkusen, Basel and Schalke.

Guardiola has spent around £530 million in his two and a half years in charge of City and this along with the domestic performances certainly show that the club has got the firepower to go all the way through to Champions League glory. So where does the fault lie?

Guardiola has always been applauded for his commitment towards attacking football no matter what stage it is. His Champions League stats, however, suggest he might need to start looking the other way. Perhaps towards Jose’ Mourinho’s pragmatism.

While it would be naive to argue that he should drop his possession-based attacking football in favour of a purely counter-attacking defensive system, his over emphasis on attack needs to be looked closely. In a Champions League game, especially the knockouts, most of the teams aim to edge past the other team and more often than not adopt an expedient approach over a consistent one. In response to this, Pep’s domestic football-suited purist approach often leads to counter-intuitive outcomes.

His teams have repeatedly been found on the wrong side of blitzkriegs i.e. goals scored in quick successions which often decide the result of knockout games. It faced the wrath of a lethal Liverpool side last year while conceding 3 goals in 19 minutes at Anfield. Monaco also scored 2 goals in the first eight minutes against them in the 1st leg in 2016-17 Champions League.

During his reign at Bayern, his team was subjected to another devastating spell in which it leaked 3 goals in less than 18 minutes against Real Madrid in April 2014.

These blitzkriegs not just point out the defensive frailties but, more evidently, towards the purist approach adopted by Guardiola that that does not seem to work against the European elites.

In modern day football, the only thing permanent is change. It’s time for Pep to make an exception in his approach when it comes to Champions League. Maybe he can take a leaf out of Mourinho’s ‘more strategic, less artistic’ approach.