Man City’s dicey Everton moment shines a light on Pep Guardiola’s John Stones dilemma

After months of unusual but welcome stability, the curse of Pep Guardiola's indecipherable team selections struck again on Saturday before Manchester City's 1-0 win against Everton.

Guardiola surprisingly left Kyle Walker out of his starting XI, instead opting to draft in John Stones from the bench.

After City's defence had a spectacularly bad day at the office against Tottenham the previous weekend, there had been calls among supporters for Stones to be recalled to the side.

The 27-year-old has found minutes hard to come by this season thanks to the good form of Ruben Dias and Laporte, but the duo struggled against the likes of Harry Kane and Son Heung-min.

But Guardiola decided not to break up his central defensive partnership at Goodison Park, with Stones sticking to the flank. There are two possible reasons for this.

Firstly, Walker still has two matches of his Champions League suspension left to serve and Stones is the primary candidate to replace him. With Cancelo now a crucial cog on the left-hand side of City's attack, Guardiola is unlikely to move him out of his position.

That was the case in the 5-0 win against Sporting Lisbon a couple of weeks ago, but with a tougher challenge almost certainly waiting in the quarter-finals, Pep will want to keep Stones sharp with regular minutes in his new role.

Alternatively, Guardiola may have been reacting to Walker's poor performance against Spurs. The full-back was generally sloppy and allowed Kane an almost-uncontested match-winning header in injury time just moments after City had drawn level. Dropping Walker for Stones could quite easily have been a warning against slipping standards.

So how did Stones do at right-back?

City put in another unconvincing performance