Josko Gvardiol transfer will show Man City avoiding issue from last season

Pep Guardiola came away with a few thoughts from their first dropped points of last season, a 3-3 draw at Newcastle in their third game.

One was that Manchester City hadn't played that badly, and that plenty of teams would find it difficult to come away from St James' Park with three points against a confident side that played with more about them than he was used to seeing from Eddie Howe. This was a point the City boss wasted no opportunity to repeat as the season went on and Newcastle upset expectations to clinch a top-four place.

The biggest and most urgent takeaway from the game though was that Guardiola felt he was short on centre-backs. With Aymeric Laporte ruled out of the opening months, and having already compromised at left-back when the club refused to meet Brighton's asking price for Marc Cucurella, injury to Nathan Ake at Newcastle left City with too few bodies that Guardiola could rely on.

With just 10 days to go in the transfer window, the City hierarchy didn't just accept Guardiola's request but acted fast and bought Manu Akanji from Dortmund. Even if they couldn't know at the time how well that £15m would turn out, City had at least given Guardiola what he felt was needed.

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The importance of Akanji - and the rest of the centre-backs - grew and grew over time to the point where by February there was usually four of them in the starting XI as City went without full-backs. Nathan Ake became an integral part of the team at left-back after shutting down Bukayo Saka, and Akanji proved valuable on either flank as well as in the middle.

As City neared the Treble, and after winning it, Guardiola felt that the biggest difference in