Why Man City are embracing new academy reality amid Pep Guardiola's harsh but fair assessment

Last week, Pep Guardiola sat down with Manchester City sporting director Txiki Begiristain and academy head coach Brian Barry-Murphy and made a brave decision.

City needed fresh bodies for the Carabao Cup trip to Newcastle, and Guardiola had made high-profile comments about fielding a team of youth team players. He has done it before in the competition and has never shied away from calling up youngsters when he needs to boost the numbers.

Except this time, City decided that there were no players ready to help the first team, and that their development would be best suited to remaining at under-21 level for now.

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Such a decision could be a poor reflection on a club's academy, but (remembering that it's far harder to break into the City first team than other clubs) it was in fact more an acceptance of how the City Academy has been working exactly to plan in recent years.

With the majority of last season's under-21 side moving on for big money or on loan, Barry-Murphy's latest group is a far younger, more inexperienced one. It would be unfair to throw them into a cauldron like St James' Park, when they could instead field a strong side at Barnsley in the EFL Trophy instead.

"I think it's a fair assessment," Barry-Murphy tells MEN Sport over Guardiola's academy comments. "Our players are probably a lot further back in their development from where we were last season.

"We had players who had been through the process a year before and were having their second go at it. The players we're exposing at the moment are very much having their first taste of Premier