What Pep Guardiola has done with Rico Lewis this season shows Man City faith despite critics

Rico Lewis hit a significant milestone when Manchester City kicked off against Wolves.

The 19-year-old became the first teenager to make 25 league starts under Pep Guardiola, which is quite an achievement when you consider the young talent the manager has had at City, Bayern Munich and Barcelona. Kingsley Coman is second on that list with 20, with Bojan Krkic in third on 16 and former City defender Eric Garcia on 10.

Lewis only turns 20 towards the end of November, so has another three games to stretch his lead. Given where Guardiola is in his career, that record may never be broken.

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And towards the end of the Wolves game as City searched for a winner, Lewis became just the second Blue to pass 1,000 minutes of game time for the season so far. Erling Haaland achieved it at the end of the first half and Josko Gvardiol and Ederson would manage it before the game was out.

For Lewis to have been the second most-used player this season behind Haaland shows just how much more important he has become to the side. Last year, it was not until late December that Lewis passed 1,000 minutes in all competitions.

There have been questions in recent matches about Lewis defensively, with both Fulham and Wolves being allowed too much space in the right-back area that the defender had vacated to gallop up the pitch. However, Guardiola has kept faith in him and with Kyle Walker unlikely to feature in midweek against Sparta Prague there could be more minutes coming very quickly for the youngster.