Sports

The Numbers Behind Pep Guardiola's Historic Man City Reign

Pep Guardiola has brought down the curtain on 10 years at Manchester City as the 2025–26 Premier League season drew to a close.

The Spaniard was unable to finish with a seventh and final Premier League title, giving up the race to Arsenal a few days before the last match was due to be played. Still, a Carabao Cup and FA Cup double this season still made it 17 major trophies in Manchester-20 overall.

Guardiola took charge of 593 matches as Manchester City manager and won 423-it's a 71% win rate. He drew 77 and lost 93, the very last of which was Sunday's home defeat to Aston Villa.

A decade earlier, it all started for Pep with a 2–1 win against Sunderland on Aug. 8, 2016. Sergio Agüero scored the first goal of his reign after just four minutes, but it took a Paddy McNair own goal only three minutes before the end to seal the maiden victory.

Guardiola's 593rd and last match actually broke a club record that had stood for more than 60 years, eclipsing the 592 games as City manager led by Les McDowall from 1950–1963.


Pep Guardiola's Man City Record by Competition

CompetitionPlayedWins%
Premier League38026971%
Champions League*1076662%
FA Cup544685%
Carabao/EFL Cup393385%
UEFA Super Cup11100%
Club World Cup6583%
Community Shield6350%
Total59342371%

*Includes qualifying


Man City Premier League Points Under Pep Guardiola

 Guardiola won the Premier League more often than not. | Robbie Jay Barratt/AMA/Getty Images
Guardiola won the Premier League more often than not. | Robbie Jay Barratt/AMA/Getty Images

After a fairly unremarkable start in the Premier League-third in 2016–17-Guardiola soon had City making English soccer history. The following season, his team won 32 of 38 matches and became the first and only side to reach the 100-point milestone in a single campaign.

City then won the same number of matches (32) in 2018–19, although a different breakdown of draws and losses saw the team fall two points short of another century.

Guardiola's last two seasons were actually his worst in terms of Premier League points.

SeasonPointsPosition
2016–17 783rd
2017–181001st
2018–19981st
2019–20812nd
2020–21861st
2021–22931st
2022–23891st
2023–24911st
2024–25713rd
2025–26772nd

Man City Goals Scored Under Pep Guardiola

Guardiola's City scored 1,462 goals in total, bookended by Agüero and Antoine Semenyo. They conceded 557, with Sunderland's Jermain Defoe the first opposition player to find the net and Aston Villa's Ollie Watkins the last.

Although Agüero became City's all-time top scorer during Guardiola's reign-surpassing Eric Brook's 77-year-old record in 2017 and substantially bettering it to 260, Erling Haaland is the player who has scored more than any other under the manager's guidance: 162 in four seasons.


Man City Trophies Under Pep Guardiola

 Just the one Champions League triumph. | Craig Mercer/MB Media/Getty Images
Just the one Champions League triumph. | Craig Mercer/MB Media/Getty Images Craig Mercer/MB Media Getty Images

In 136 years of history as a soccer institution prior to Guardiola's arrival, Manchester City had enjoyed isolated golden periods-1930s, 1960s-yet were not a traditional powerhouse of English soccer scene. That had obviously already started to change following the Abu Dhabi takeover in 2008, and then Guardiola supercharged things from 2016 onwards.

Four league titles spread between 1936–37 and 2013–14, grew by six in a decade. City had won the FA Cup five times prior to 2016, including Roberto Mancini's 2010–11 effort that broke a 35-year trophy drought, with Guardiola winning three of his own. In the Carabao Cup, the Spaniard more than doubled the club's historic tally, with five on top of the existing four.

City had won a UEFA Cup Winners' Cup way back in 1969–70, but European Cup success was unprecedented until Guardiola delivered a maiden Champions League in 2022–23. That he only managed continental glory once in 10 years is perhaps the main disappointment of his reign.

Ultimately, however, Guardiola won 20 trophies in 10 years, compared to 18 in the entire rest of Manchester City's history.

CompetitionGuardiola WinsBefore vs. Pep
Premier League6 (2017–18, 2018–19, 2020–21, 2021–22, 2022–23, 2023–24)4* vs. 6
Champions League1 (2022–23)0 vs. 1
FA Cup3 (2018–19, 2022–23, 2025–26)5 vs. 3
Carabao/EFL Cup5 (2017–18, 2018–19, 2019–20, 2020–21, 2025–26)4 vs. 5
UEFA Super Cup1 (2023)0 vs. 1
FIFA Club World Cup1 (2023)0 vs. 1
UEFA Cup Winners' CupN/A1 vs. 0
Community Shield3 (2018, 2019, 2024)4 vs. 3
Total2018 vs. 20

*Includes pre-Premier League era


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This story was originally published May 25, 2026 at 12:30 PM.

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