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Manchester City bounced back from last week’s Champions League humbling at Norwegian side Bodo/Glimt at the weekend, as they saw off Premier League basement dwellers Wolves 2-0 at the Etihad Stadium.
The goals from Omar Marmoush and new signing Antoine Semenyo helped cut the gap to leaders Arsenal to just four points, with City’s cross-town rivals Manchester United doing them a favour on Sunday, with a dramatic 3-2 victory against the Gunners.
While City remain in the title race - and in the hunt for all four major trophies this season - they have struggled with consistancy, with the defeat to the Norwegian minnows, plus this month’s derby defeat at Old Trafford showing that they are struggling to match the levels of the Pep Guardiola sides that won the treble in 2023 and claimed a fourth straight Premier League title a year later.
Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola exit fear
While City have bounced back from last season’s blip, which saw them suffer nine defeats on the way to a third-place finish, there remains two major issues on the horizon which the club have been having to prepare for.
The first is the issue of the 130 Premier League charges that hanging over their head for three years now. These charges - which the club deny - concern their accounting practices, with the Premier League’s independent hearing concluding back in December 2024, with all parties still awaiting a verdict.
A range of sanctions have been mooted, should the club be found guilty, ranging from huge fines to point deductions, but according to a report from the Telegraph, internally, this is not the club’s most pressing issue.
Instead, it is the future of Guardiola, who is in the final 18 months of his contract, with the City dressing room said to be well aware of the contingency plans being drawn up, should the boss decide to leave at the end of the current season.
The report in the Telegraph adds that Guardiola’s training ground behaviour has not changed, but points out that at the end of the current campaign, it will be a round ten years since he joined the club.
While the prospect of Guardiola - ranked at No.4 in FourFourTwo’s list of the best managers in the world last year - being sacked has never been on the agenda, even during last season’s mini-crisis, questions over the former Barcelona man’s future have often been on the agenda.
Back in 2020, he let his contract run until the final seven months, with his 2022 deal coming when he was in the final year of his existing terms. He last signed a new deal 14 months ago, at which time he revealed that he had previously decided that the 2024/25 season would be his last, only for him to change tact and decide he wanted to drag the club out of last season’s slump.
The report adds that Guardiola believes 2025 to be one of his best years with the club, even though they did not win a trophy, while a title-winning season this year could be seen as the perfect end to this mini-rebuild.
With the club bringing in the likes of Antoine Semenyo and Marc Guehi this month, it shows that Guardiola still has the pulling power to attract the Premier League’s best players to the Etihad Stadium.
So as the wait for the outcome of the 130 charges goes on, the club is on tenterhooks regarding what the manager decides to do, come the end of the season.
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