Man City's longest winning runs under Pep Guardiola - ranked

Pep Guardiola may have a trophy cabinet to rival any other manager in history but he also possesses the same insecurities of mere mortals.

Despite leading Manchester City to the European treble in 2023, Guardiola admitted in the same summer: "I live with incredible doubts in my head." Those nagging voices are loudest in matches against clubs from outside the traditional elite.

"Pep is more worried about losing to mid-level teams," Guardiola's former assistant Domenec Torrent once revealed, "because with good teams like Barcelona, Bayern [Munich] and now City, you have to win against the mid-level teams, always. He knows that the better teams have to win. He worries about that because it's like it's shameful to lose to smaller teams."

Backed by an unrivalled bank balance even among the Premier League's riches, Guardiola has been able to earn victories against clubs of every stature. In five of his eight seasons at City, Guardiola has overseen a winning streak that has stretched into double digits.

Here are the longest runs which still haven't eased Guardiola's self-doubt.

10 games (13 Aug 2016 - 24 Sep 2016)

It's easy to forget the universal doubt that loomed over Guardiola's arrival at Manchester City and English football in 2016. Former Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson captured the view of many pundits when he said: "Man City have made a real coup in getting him but Pep won't find it easy, English football is not easy."

Guardiola duly won his first ten competitive matches as City manager.

Despite this winning start, not everyone in the City camp was particularly enamoured with the incoming Catalan. Dimitri Seluk, the agent of Yaya Toure who had been dropped by his former Barcelona manager, sniffed: "Guardiola wins a few games and thinks he is king."

Guardiola's critics would delight in his side's subsequent drop-off - City failed to win their next six matches and only just qualified for the Champions League at the end of a trophy-less season.

10 games (25 Feb 2023 - 15 Apr 2023)

The former Bayern Munich coach Peter Hermann joined Guardiola during one of his infamous, endless conversations with Thomas Tuchel in a Munich bar in 2014. The next day, he pledged to end his four-decade association with the sport. "I always thought I knew a little bit about football," Hermann told Michael Reschke, another spectator to the dizzying tactical debrief. "But I'm no longer so sure..."

However, Guardiola has expressed some more easily digestible views. "When one player scores 60 goals," the Catalan sage once said, "it helps you win games."

After a fearsome but not entirely fluid start to his Manchester City career, Erling Haaland caught fire in the spring of 2023. During City's ten-match winning sequence, Haaland scored an outrageous 14 goals.

The burning apex of this blistering run came during a 7-0 demolition of RB Leipzig in the Champions League round of 16; Haaland was responsible for five of City's goals before stomping off in a strop when he was substituted in the 62nd minute. "I would have loved to score a double hat-trick," Haaland wistfully reflected post-game.

11 games (26 Aug 2017 - 21 Oct 2017)

Between August and December 2017, only one team stopped City from winning inside 90 minutes. Guardiola's side would finish the top-flight campaign with a record-shattering 100 points but Wolverhampton Wanderers were just as dominant in the Championship (finishing one point shy of their own century).

Nuno Espirito Santo had heavily rotated his runaway league leaders yet still held City to a goalless stalemate in the fourth round of the Carabao Cup at the Etihad Stadium. City won the tie on penalties but the match will go down as a draw, ensuring City's longest winning sequence that season only stood at 11 games rather than 20.

11 games (19 Dec 2023 - 13 Feb 2024)

City travelled to Jeddah for the Club World Cup from outside the Premier League's top three. With the lowest points tally and joint-worst defensive record of Guardiola's tenure at that stage of the season, the flight to Saudi Arabia cannot have been particularly cheery.

Successive victories against the best Asia and South America had to offer restored City's swagger and hunger.

On the way back from Saudi Arabia, Guardiola overheard his players looking towards their upcoming Premier League fixture. "They didn't know I was listening," Guardiola recalled, "and they started to talk about Everton. I said: 'Wow, this is my team'."

The pre-match chat may have helped City earn a comfortable 3-1 win at Goodison Park but the return to fitness of Kevin De Bruyne and Haaland certainly didn't take anything away from their ominous charge.

21 games (19 Dec 2020 - 2 Mar 2021)

After a desperately frustrating 1-1 draw at home to West Bromwich Albion in December 2020, Guardiola sighed: "You have to win this kind of game." City would win every other kind of game over the subsequent ten weeks.

Guardiola would later reflect that City's stalemate against the Baggies was when "we realised we were not brilliant". "Everything was heavy, it was not natural," the Catalan reflected. "We adjusted something, especially to put more players in front of the box."

City set about deploying a dizzying rotating carousel of false nines throughout the remainder of the campaign, storming into an unassailable lead at the Premier League summit after a British-record 21-match winning sequence.

Even Guardiola admitted he was "surprised and impressed" by City's run but warned: "The record will be broken one day." It may well be Guardiola who breaks it.

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