Man City rebuild: Why £130m is only start of PL champions' much-needed rebuild

"In the summer the club thought about it and I said 'no, I don't want to make any signings'," Pep Guardiola revealed before Manchester City travelled to Brentford last week.

A day later his side threw away a 2-0 lead to add another two points to the collection they have dropped from winning positions this season - which now stretches to 14 - conceding their 28th and 29th goals of the season in the process.

For context, that's more than they let in during the either the 2017/18 and 2021/22 seasons with 16 games still remaining in this campaign. And that's without mentioning the three more points they gave away from 2-0 up at PSG in midweek.

Guardiola and City have been forced into action. The alarm bells have been loud enough to sanction £130m on three new arrivals this month: Omar Marmoush, Abdukodir Khusanov and Vitor Reis. It is nearly four times what they have spent in the last four January windows combined.

Jack Grealish has said he hopes the trio will be enough to bring the "swagger" back to Man City, but adding a forward and two centre-backs does not address their balance in the middle of the park without Ballon d'Or holder Rodri.

Even without their midfield rudder, it is worth remembering City still led the Premier League as recently as the end of October, as much as a reminder of just how sharply the decline has followed.

Guardiola routinely takes the blame for the club's ailments on his own chin. On this occasion, he can lay claim to some responsibility in hindsight; deeper recruitment in the summer would have offered some protection to their deeper squad issues.

This is a team whose bench would once get into most title rivals' starting line-ups. Pep had Riyad Mahrez, Leroy Sane and Gabriel Jesus as a back-up front three once upon a time.

Recruitment in recent years has not hit those heights, with Jeremy Doku, Grealish and Matheus Nunes only showing that kind of calibre in fits and starts. But City have far greater concerns off the ball than on it, particularly that Rodri-shaped hole at the base of midfield.

Compare him to players of similar importance. If Virgil Van Dijk had started one game for Liverpool this season, would they have enough in reserve to top the Premier League?

The Spaniard is so good that his ACL injury has created a void at both ends of the pitch, leaving an injury-hit defence without the world's best screen and forcing Guardiola to find other means of harbouring creativity in the middle of the park.

The defensive exposure has shone the spotlight firmly on Kyle Walker's rapid decline and is an area Guardiola could see coming ahead of time. Walker had lost a yard of pace in the Euro 2024 final in July and by the time he was embarrassed by Timo Werner for Tottenham's fourth in November, it was clear he was not going to find it again.

In the other box, Julian Alvarez - who started 31 Premier League games last season - made City a decent profit in August but his departure left them without any attacking alternative to Erling Haaland, who has already been required to play 27 full 90 minutes this season.

Haaland's 17 strikes in the league represent the highest proportion of City's goal tally scored by a single player in any season under Guardiola. Marmoush's arrival is a welcome one and not before time.

Where no-one could have seen City coming unstuck in quite the way they have is the sheer relentlessness of their injuries. This is a team which has gone, and gone, and gone again for four years, winning the treble, four Premier League titles and even the Super Cup and Club World Cup last year.

Only three of City's first-team outfield players are aged 31 or over, and Man City's average starting XI this season is younger than Liverpool's. This is not just about age, but intensity.

Pep thought he could get one more tune out of his squad, but with the relentlessness of both their schedule and his demands something had to give eventually.

De Bruyne's drop-off is somewhat suspected but Ruben Dias, John Stones and Nathan Ake have missed 37 matches between them already, with the former now ruled out again with an adductor issue and no immediate timescale on his return. Four of City's six league defeats have come in the nine games he has sat out. Can they reach those old levels again? Neither Guardiola nor City's backroom staff can be sure.

Their injuries have forced Manuel Akanji to start 25 games already, straight off the back of playing every minute of Switzerland's quarter-final run at Euro 2024 last summer and the vast majority of City's games last term. He has looked unfit himself and his defensive metrics have faded almost unanimously.

New signing Khusanov and the return of Stones will take some pressure off Akanji and City's wider defensive issues, even if the other defensive arrival Reis appears too young to make a serious impact in the immediate future, after barely 20 games in professional football.

None of that solves the greater problem of midfield, where Mateo Kovacic cannot pull the strings on his own in the same way Rodri can. It is not just his fault, but it is his task to solidify a midfield which has already faced more fast breaks than in any season under Guardiola.

He regularly finds himself ahead of the play and with Bernardo Silva as his regular partner, has little cover when it happens. Part of that comes down to Guardiola's demands to defend by keeping the ball - but without Rodri, City also lack the player who regularly completes the most passes, and the most line-breaking passes, across the league.

The summer return of Ilkay Gundogan, who has also been tried in the role, was a nice moment of nostalgia but he does not have the legs to play the games Rodri could.

Guardiola went for risk vs reward, knowing Rodri had not suffered a significant injury, or needed any prolonged period out of the team, in any of his eight previous seasons since breaking through at Villarreal. For the first time, he has seen what happens when it doesn't pay off.

"I don't want new signings in January," Guardiola said before Christmas. "I just want my injured players back."

His reluctance has finally given way given the ongoing nature of City's results and performances, but no matter how they fix the gaps elsewhere the club cannot continue to suffer for long periods without their lynchpin.

There are still flashes of the old City without him - the recent return of De Bruyne's passing masterclasses, and Phil Foden finding himself among the goals. But the fragile confidence and overrun midfield remain.

He may take time to get back to his best, just as Van Dijk did after his own ACL injury in 2020. A direct replacement will still be hard to find but until someone can carry some of the load consistently, this feels like just the start of a rebuild.

January has shown just how expensive and painful the overhaul will be, with £130m already spent and City still reported to be considering playing Stones or Akanji as a make-shift No 6.

Perhaps it will be Hugo Viana's first job in the summer. There was life before Rodri, and there will be life after him though only, it seems clear, with another significant outlay.

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