Guardiola’s City draw against Crystal Palace complicates his chances of being Premier League champion. The pressure from Liverpool is beginning to be felt and some of Pep’s decisions are causing surprise among the ‘citizen’ fans. The most striking, without a doubt, is his immobility when it comes to making changes.
At Selhurst Park he did not make any, despite the fact that in the last minutes he had the urgent need to score a goal. On the bench were, despite this, Gündogan, Gabriel Jesus, Sterling, Zinchenko… “I was thinking about it, but the boys were playing well and their pace was good,” he said after the game.
In the previous Premier clash, the derby against United, he only made one of the three possible substitutions, so in the aggregate of the last 180 minutes he has barely made a substitution. If an analysis of 10 games is done, the data is just as striking. Just 13 changes used out of 30 possible. Even against Brentford he didn’t move the bench, as he did against Palace this week.
This little use of Guardiola’s changes contrasts with his request that there be five substitutions in the Premier, instead of three. The City coach is one of the promoters, along with other great coaches in the championship, that in England the same measure is taken as in the rest of Europe and the number of substitutions is increased to five. However, his trend, far from needing more changes, is becoming more and more the opposite.