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When I first saw these quotes coming from Pep Guardiolas press conference on Monday afternoon, I could be forgiven for thinking it was a piece of self-reflection.

Of course, it wasnt that. It was a good bit of self-deprecating sarcasm aimed at his critics who, perhaps lazily in the eyes of many, reduce every Champions League exit at the hands of Pep Guardiola as a simple case of him overthinking it and making the job more complicated than it needed to be.

But is there any truth in the idea that Guardiola is a serial overthinker? Like a twenty-something wondering if that girl they matched with on Tinder not replying for four hours is because shes busy or if shes suddenly decided she hates you, does Guardiola spend his nights lying awake and thinking over and over again in his head about the various ways Lyon could punish Manchester Citys normal back four? Almost certainly yes. Lets get into it.

Ill lay my cards out on the table before we begin, firstly with a couple of caveats.

Pep Guardiola is the best manager on the planet. Nothing that I say here, no matter how true I think it is, will ever change my opinion when it comes to how great Pep is. Hes the best manager weve ever seen and has taken the club to heights which have been unrivalled prior to his arrival and will probably never be rivalled after hes gone.

Do I care about his record in the Champions League? Not especially. The Champions League is a competition I care very little for. Itd be nice for City to win it and getting beat in the final last year didnt feel great, but I was genuinely over it by the time Id driven home. We could never win the competition in my lifetime and Id die a perfectly content death. The circumstances of the individual defeats can still be frustrating and painful in equal measure, however if those circumstances were to be applied to the Premier League and were to be the reasons we didnt win a Premier League title, the pain would be much more severe.

So, into the meat of it.

I think a portion of the blame for each of Citys Champions League exits (with the exception of Monaco, where an old and disjointed squad met one of the most exciting attacking teams in Europe) can be laid at the feet of Guardiola and his selections. Absolutely not 100% of the blame, before you start lighting up the pitchforks like Barcelona fans before you have done, but some of the blame.

When looking at the individual circumstances surrounding each of the exits, its hard not to look at the decisions made in each of the rounds where weve gone out of the competition and think that it had something to do with the outcome. This can be for a few reasons, each of which well get into, however lets first look at the exits themselves.

Cast your minds back to 2018 and that disgusting week where we were knocked out of the competition by Liverpool, with a lovely derby day defeat robbing us of the chance to celebrate the title with United fans watching in the away end sandwiched between the two legs.

Im sure many of you dont need reminding that none other than Ilkay Gundogan was playing on the right of midfield that day, with no genuine winger playing on the side of the pitch which has just the small attacking threat of Andy Robertson and Sadio Man. Man went on to score the third goal of the game, with all three goals coming inside just over half an hour, and City never really looked like they were in the game.

Of course, this tie was a bit of a mess. Multiple penalty decisions went against City over the two legs (as they so often do against the scousers), a perfectly legitimate goal was somehow ruled offside early in the second leg, which would have taken the score to 2-0 quite early on, as this was the season before the implementation of VAR. Throw in the fact that Jurgen Klopp was Guardiolas kryptonite at this point in their careers and you had a recipe for failure. But the tone was set with that bizarre first leg team selection, which will have done no favours for the players.

Now, for 2019 and our trip to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

The line-up was a controversial one at the time, as I remember, as both Kevin De Bruyne and Leroy San, one of which being well on his way to Premier League Player of the Year and the other being one of the most dynamic attacking players in the country, were left on the bench in favour of Ilkay Gundogan (not a decision that offends me a huge amount) and a Riyad Mahrez who was nowhere near the Riyad Mahrez we have on our hands now. He was still very much the mercurial player who was fitting into Pep Guardiolas system at this stage.

To leave out Kevin De Bruyne, at the very least, was a baffling decision at the time. He played every game either side and in between the two legs, as well as the second leg itself, yet the most dangerous player in world football at the time was benched in a crucial Champions League first leg.

And yet even this exit comes with circumstances which are wildly out of Peps control. A penalty was awarded to City early in the first leg and was subsequently not scored by Sergio Aguero.

The second leg is well documented with the shambles that went on there, firstly with Fernando Llorentes handball NOT being picked up by VAR only for Agueros marginal offside in the build-up to Raheem Sterlings crucial late winner to rule it out and condemn Manchester City to defeat.

Its a game Ive got zero interest in revisiting. This is the one which ruined any shred of enthusiasm I had for the Champions League.

And now for the big one. The real doozy. The ultimate Pep disasterclass. Lyon.

I dont even feel like I need to justify this.

Even with the defensive situation going on at the club at the time, with Nicolas Otamendi being an absolute liability and Eric Garcia suddenly emerging as the strongest centre-back option at the club, which his move to Barcelona has proved was probably more by default than anything else, this was unacceptable.

Five at the back against Lyon, who lets never forget, finished seventh in Ligue 1 that season. Ligue 1, by the way, did not have a project restart and therefore Lyon had no real competitive fixtures to prepare them for this match. Their only game before this was a 2-1 defeat to Juventus, which only saw them progress to the next round due to the away goal rule. Yet despite this, Pep decided that five at the back was the correct way to go. Maxwell Cornet and Moussa Dembele did the rest.

I dont even feel like this one deserves the caveats that the other games did. This should never have been a defeat. In Peps very slight defence, this round was one leg only, which removed the ability to correct anything in a second game, and Sterlings open net which he managed to miss is one of the few times Ive felt genuine feelings of violence towards a City player. But this one more than any other was on Pep. This was almost entirely Pep, in my view.

Finally, the pice de rsistance, the Champions League final vs Chelsea.

No defensive midfielder. Its the main talking point of the game and I totally understand why. We have to remember that, going into this game, there were two games against Chelsea in relatively quick succession beforehand. A league game and an FA Cup semi-final, both of which were defeats. Neither of which had very serious line-ups, Guardiola went five at the back in the Premier League (with the title all but wrapped up) and then a Rodri/Fernandinho double pivot in the FA Cup, with Benjamin Mendy playing both games, which is basically telling the world youre not arsed about the game.

However, lots of us naturally assumed that this was Pep keeping his cards relatively close to the chest. Wed all seen the line-up which had gotten us to the final, and was mostly responsible for the clubs record winning run earlier that season, yet wed not seen it come up against Chelsea yet. Maybe Guardiola just didnt want to give Tuchel a practice run against the team which hed ultimately face in the final.

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Nope, instead he moved the clubs top goalscorer, Ilkay Gundogan, to the base of midfield rather than his false 9 role hed flourished in, moved Phil Foden, whod lit up the Champions League from the left-wing, centrally in favour of Raheem Sterling, who was in what could politely be called indifferent form. Both Rodri and Fernandinho were nowhere to be seen in what many people would consider to be the most important game in the clubs history. Chelsea didnt play against Citys strongest XI in either the Premier League and FA Cup games, only they didnt play against their strongest XI in the Champions League final either. It was all just a waste.

But Gundogan is a defensive midfielder, I hear the cries, He did it in 2018/19 and he did it for Dortmund for years!

2018/19 was a long time ago. Dortmund even more so. Gundogan hadnt played the six role with any kind of consistency for literally years and had flourished last season as a very advanced midfielder, as shown by his goalscoring record for the club. To expect a player to just totally switch mentality in the way they play through an entire season for one game, particularly a game which is such high pressure, is mental. It defies logic. As for the idea that hes a world class six? Ill let Noisy Neighbours answer that.

Now for the caveats. The players did bottle it, whether its because of the occasion or the pressure which had been partially applied by the club itself in many instances, theres not many players who came off that pitch with a lot of credit. Performances were drab all over the pitch, however this brings me to one of the reasons why Peps tinkering can be a bigger issue than maybe hes willing to admit.

Thomas Muller spoke out a couple of years ago when it came to this idea of Pep overthinking big games and gave a pretty reasonable response, one which I think even the most staunch of Pep defenders can agree with after our numerous Champions League exits.

In knockout games, Pep pays a lot of attention to the opposition and their strengths. Hes always a little torn between paying extreme attention and respect to the opposition - more so than against smaller teams - and sticking to his convictions and to a system he believes in. To go, We will play with that risk because thats who we are."

Sometimes its not 100% clear what were doing.

But that was years ago, right? Peps a changed man since Bayern Munich!... right?

The players were frustrated, in the aftermath of Lyon in particular, that Pep had needlessly changed something and made the lives of the players more difficult. Theyd trained all week to play a 4-3-3 and, at the eleventh hour, Guardiola decided that it was essential that they play with a back five for the second time that season.

Sources close to the squad were unanimous in their assessment - Pep Guardiola got it wrong and the players are frustrated that it keeps happening.

Youre more than welcome to read this, as you probably will have at the time, and decide that this is on the players being bottlejobs and not able to handle a little bit of change. Theyre all professional footballers after all, so they should be able to just play wherever you tell them to on the pitch with no problems.

Unfortunately, football isnt really that simple. I was going to say that this isnt Football Manager (Week in the City bingo), but even Football Manager knows that changing the personnel and moving the system around is a one way ticket to getting slapped by a team you should be comfortably beating. Players are human beings and they like routine, they like things to be what they're used to. Its the difference between a player being able to put in a 7/10 performance without even thinking because its second nature to them and a player having to think twice and concentrate that extra 10% for the same level of performance. The biggest shame of all about the Champions League final is that the entire run to the final looked like Pep had learned to stick with a trusted team. He'd found a formula which worked and, until the final hurdle, he didn't change things.

Now, obviously this doesnt totally excuse the players. Im sure theres still a large part of the Champions League final, for instance, which was entirely down to the weight of the occasion and a lack of composure. If you were more cynical than I am, you could look at the post-Lyon comments and say it was City players using a scapegoat which the fans had already leapt on and conveniently stumbling on an excuse to absolve themselves of any responsibility on the night. If you were more cynical than I am, that is.

However I cannot believe that the decision by Guardiola to shift around two or three top of the teams top performers and neglect to play a regular defensive midfielder didnt have an impact on the players. They werent shy about making it clear that it mattered against Lyon, however much stock you put into that or not, so theres no reason why it wouldnt have mattered here. Again, you can decide to think that this means the players are spineless but its on the manager to placate said spinelessness. Throwing new variables into the mix in a game which no doubt already has everybody on the edge mentally is probably not the best way to do that.

Now, despite how harsh Ive been in many instances, Im not genuinely saying this is all on Guardiola. Well, maybe I am when it comes to Lyon.

Every single one of these ties which saw City go out has multiple mitigating factors. Circumstances which are out of the managers control. Of course they do, its football. If Guardiola had ultimate control over absolutely every facet of a game of football than wed have won the Champions League a long time ago. Knockout competitions are inherently based on a level of luck and I dont think its wrong to say that Guardiola has certainly been missing a fair bit of luck in the years gone by. Any manage who has a goal incorrectly ruled out for being offside due to no VAR, only to get knocked out of the same competition the following year precisely because of VAR, has dealt with a level of infuriating bad luck which would have seen me throw my laptop across the room if it happened in Football Manager (I swear I have more going on in my life than Football Manager. Honest.)

The one thing Guardiola does have total control over, however, is his line up selection. And nobody can convince me that Guardiolas not got a pretty sketchy track record of this in the Champions League - and quite often his big, tactic-altering decisions get us knocked out.

Guardiola does these kind of things every week in the league, is another one Ive heard a lot, You dont complain when it wins.

Well, obviously nobodys going to complain when it wins. Thats kind of the nature of supporting a football club. You dont win a game playing a back five and then immediately start moaning about why you played a back five. Like it or not, thats not how it works.

Theres also something to be said for the degree to which thats even true. Sure, Guardiola changes something for every single game. Multiple things. But theyre usually simple things like I will play Sterling on the right this week instead of the left, or Gundogan is more suited to this game than Bernardo Silva. You know, just standard rotation. Theres obviously a bit more to it, but you get my basic point. We dont go into a game against Burnley wondering why Zinchenko is suddenly playing the false 9 role because Peps thrown a huge curveball at Sean Dyche. Its a level of tactical switching which is reserved for the biggest games in what many would consider the biggest competition.

Resting De Bruyne for a Champions League knockout tie and then not dropping him for the rest of the season, playing Gundogan at right-wing, a back five against Lyon, no defensive midfielder against Chelsea. These kind of things rarely happen in a league format and, if they do, its not quite as crucial because, well, its a league format. Youve got 37 games to make up for it if theres an error. The Champions League doesnt allow for that safety cushion. If youre gonna fix something that aint broken, and for me thats definitely what he did in the Champions League final, it had better win you the game.

If anybody has an example of a big "What on earth is that team?" moment in a knockout game in the Champions League which still resulted in us progressing to the next round, I'd be happy to hear it. None spring to mind. (DISCLAIMER: This is written before we play against Atltico Madrid. If this game does in fact spring up a "what on earth?" moment and we win, this still does not invalidate my argument.)

Theres plenty of fans out there who think that any decision that Guardiola makes is, by default, the correct one. In 95% or more of instances, thats probably entirely accurate. And theres plenty of times where weve been defeated where hes still not done anything egregiously wrong. Although that doesnt make him immune from criticism when he does do something wrong. He is fallible. Hes capable of human error, just like anybody else.

And ultimately, regardless of whatever criticism lies within this piece, hes taken the club to a new level in European football. Consistently competing at the top end of the competition is now kind of taken for granted, whereas not so long ago a Quarter Final was seen as a great achievement. Hes changed the clubs outlook in Europe, irrespective of anything else.

Guardiola might poke fun at those who consider his Champions League defeats to be entirely due to him overthinking his opposition, and largely hes right to do so. But lets not pretend that this reputation isnt earned to some degree. If you dont want people to think you change things and make up mental formations for big games, maybe you should stop changing things and making up mental formations for big games.

Still cant wait for you to sign that new deal though, Pep. Ill have another two decades of Champions League overthinking if thats what it takes.

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Pep Guardiola The Overthinker? - A Week in the City - Sports Illustrated