Savinho answers £155m Man City question with a wink for anxious Pep Guardiola

Keep it simple.

It's been the Pep Guardiola recipe for success, getting his footballers to let the ball and their opponents do the work by being in the right positions to make the right decisions all the time. It's incredibly complicated until it becomes second nature and looks easy.

In their two-month slump, City have been messing up everything with schoolboy errors that have spoiled any decent passages of play as they have been ruthlessly exposed. Having conquered England again back in May, Guardiola possibly realised too late that he had to build his team back up again from the very bottom.

With confidence on the floor after their Boxing Day draw with Everton, a manager known for overthinking opted against many changes at Leicester in order to try and lift his players. After victory despite an underwhelming performance, he picked the same XI again for the first time since the beginning of the season as West Ham turned up at the Etihad and Savinho rewarded him with another three points for the team.

It has been a difficult start to life at City for Savinho after he soared in La Liga last season with Girona, and it was unfortunate for him that after his first goal for the club last week Guardiola unintentionally highlighted his tendency for mistakes.

The manager's point was perseverance, and it stands for the whole team. City have bunkered down in their crisis, sticking to their principles with a determination that there is not too much wrong and they don't need to rip up their playbook to get out of the hole; if it continued against West Ham to look like the definition of insanity at times, at others individuals saw the benefit of going back to basics.

Starting on the left again, as he did to such effect last