London - Pep Guardiola’s decision to leave out Sergio Aguero was very strange because he has been Manchester City’s Lionel Messi in recent years.
He’s their star man - scoring 50 league goals in the past two seasons - and I can’t imagine Guardiola would have ever have left Messi out of such a big game.
It looks like he has been too clever for his own good here.
He’s still in the process of building relationships with his players, so it was a risky move anyway, but bringing Aguero on in the 79th minute with the game already gone would have been almost embarrassing for the striker.
Guardiola also didn’t start Aguero against Everton - which led us to believe he was being rested for the Barcelona game - and this proved to be a mistake as City created plenty of chances but just needed someone to get on the end of them.
Then there’s the potential fallout. Aguero’s confidence will have taken a hit, not to mention that of the team after such an emphatic beating in Barcelona. Guardiola was brought in to help City make strides in the Champions League, but there was no evidence of that on Wednesday night.
What’s also strange is that last week Joe Hart put in one of the best performances we’ve seen from him as England drew 0-0 with Slovenia, so seeing Claudio Bravo continually mess up must having him scratching his head - although I don’t think he’ll be getting pleasure from it.
Guardiola has a lot of faith in Bravo and has given him instructions to play out from the back, but the decision-making rests on the keeper’s shoulders.
Giving the ball away and handling Luis Suarez’s subsequent shot was a double error that he should take responsibility for.
Once again, it left City with 10 men against arguably the best team in the world and the floodgates duly opened.
One thing Hart will be wondering is why he wasn’t given a chance to adapt to Guardiola’s way of thinking. When a manager spots a weakness in your game, you’d rather it was thought of as a development area and you were given a chance to stay in the fold.
This wasn’t the case for Hart, and the player who has been brought in because of his technical ability keeps getting it wrong.
Daily Mail