Guardiola faces Foden questions as Grealish gets nod ahead of England teammate again

The City playmaker was reduced to another cameo against Everton.

FORWARD THINKING: Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola ahead of the Premier League match at the Etihad Stadium. 

The old year ended with an uncharacteristic stutter from Pep Guardiola and Manchester City, as well as the answer to a question which, to mere football mortals at least, has been unfathomable.

Phil Foden, arguably the pre-eminent English player of his generation, was again reduced to a cameo role as a late substitute as City slumped to a draw which allowed Arsenal to open a seven-point lead at the top of the table.

After starting City’s first 10 league games of the campaign, culminating in their first defeat at Liverpool in mid October, Foden has effectively lost his starting place.

In the six matches since, he has started just once - the shock home defeat to Brentford immediately before the World Cup break - as Jack Grealish has stepped forward to make Foden’s old position his own.

It is an interesting situation for Foden, 22, to find himself in and, after that Brentford loss was followed by another two points dropped against struggling Everton, presumably one which Guardiola will take under advisement.

But, for now, the City manager explained his thinking and the fact that what he is seeing in training is keeping Grealish ahead of Foden in the City pecking order.

“Phil can play in one thousand positions,” said Guardiola. “I see something on the pitch, in the training sessions, and I use my intuition to use Jack in these games because he gives us extra passes.

“Phil is better when more vertical. Both can play together and combine.

“The way we played against Leeds, knowing their defence was completely different, was really good. The way we’ve played in the last three games is one of the best since I’ve been here.” 

Those three post-World Cup games started with an EFL Cup win over Liverpool and impressive victory at Leeds, both of which saw Foden come off the bench.

But, contrary to Guardiola’s analysis, it was hard to class this draw with Everton as belonging among some of the “best” performances of the manager's reign.

It made his decision to leave it until the 87th minute - admittedly a longer period of time than first appears, given there would be 11 minutes of stoppage time - to throw on Foden, Ilkay Gundogan and Argentinian World Cup winner Julian Alvarez as substitutes.

They could not impact the final result although Alvarez’s sensational displays in Qatar have raised the prospect of City pairing him regularly in attack with Erling Haaland, whose first-half goal took his tally for the season to 21 in the league and 27 goals overall.

“Yeah, that could happen,” said Guardiola. “The ball arrives there [in the box] and you have two strikers there so you can score a goal.

“But to create these chances we have to make the process and sometimes for that you need other types of players to create these chances.

“If I had the feeling we were creating these chances, and you have two or three in the box, that is top. But maybe you are there with Haaland and all the processes aren’t correct and we have a lot of people up front, we have more transitions and after we have a problem.

“But of course they can play together – especially against five at the back.

“We have to play with 11. We can’t play with 13 and every time it is difficult to choose for me. Always top players are not playing.

“Lately, as I get older, I mainly look at the body language. In the training sessions and everything. You cannot play good when the body language is not correct.

“Sometimes you choose the players for how happy they are, if they are there. That is one of the main decisions with choosing the line-up, because with the skills, I know how good they are.

“The body language depends on them and sometimes they are not good and it is more difficult.” The body language was certainly deflated after the final whistle sounded on 2022, with Demarai Gray’s brilliant second half equaliser having earned Everton a point that was deserved, not on the balance of play but certainly for the courage shown by Frank Lampard’s team.

After a poor home defeat to Wolves last weekend had increased speculation about Lampard’s job security, it was a perfect response from Everton players who demonstrated their backing for the manager.

“We have gone through a lot of tough moments,” said Gray. "Last season we showed our character and we don’t want to be in that situation again this year.

“We’ve not got off to the start we wanted to. It’s been a bit up and down but we have shown a real quality with our performances this season.

“It’s just about keeping our standards high and performing to that sort of level as much as we can and I think if we do that we will get more good results.”