Rodri came back from his ACL injury in the second half of the 2024-25 season and City still finished third in the Premier League. That fact tends to get buried in narratives about squad depth and bad luck, but it deserves more attention than it gets. His absence did not cause City’s problems - it revealed them.
The squad that Guardiola built around Rodri, Kevin De Bruyne, and Bernardo Silva was never designed to be rebuilt incrementally. It was designed to peak. And for three or four years, it did. But those players are now in their late twenties and early thirties, the recruitment logic that sustained the dynasty - signing technical, positionally intelligent players at exactly the right moment - has looked muddier in recent windows, and the pressing intensity that made City so difficult to play against in transition has visibly dropped.
This isn’t about one bad season. It’s about what follows an era.
The Midfielder Problem Is Real
Rodri’s return matters, but what City actually need is a succession plan rather than a recovery. Matheus Nunes has not developed into the player City presumably believed he would become when they signed him from Wolves. Kalvin Phillips left without ever fitting. The club’s ability to identify and develop central midfielders in the Guardiola mould - technically excellent, tactically literate, physically committed - has looked shakier than at any point in the past decade.
Meanwhile, the roles that De Bruyne and Silva play are becoming harder to fill because Guardiola’s system depends on players who can do several things at once at a very high level. You can’t replace that with two separate specialists.
The Bigger Concern Is Structural
Guardiola’s contract situation adds a layer of complexity here. Whether he stays or eventually leaves, City face the same fundamental question: the playing style is so specifically his that it requires a particular kind of squad construction. That construction is now in transition. Some of the players who made the system work at its peak are no longer at that level, and the incoming players haven’t yet demonstrated they understand what the system demands of them.
The assumption that Rodri’s fitness automatically restores City’s status as title contenders is the kind of thinking that leads clubs to misread their own position. It’s possible he returns to his previous level and City still spend another season chasing Arsenal and Liverpool rather than leading them. The squad around him has changed more than the optimistic version of this story allows for.