Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola has been unable to solve his team’s recent woes (Image: GETTY)
players are questioning each other amid a dreadful downturn in fortunes, according to icon Stephen Warnock. ’s side suffered their ninth defeat of the campaign on Saturday as they .
The Citizens were second best at Villa Park as Jhon Duran and Morgan Rogers struck for the hosts before Phil Foden bagged a late consolation.
The north west giants ended the day sixth in the table and nine points behind leaders as their faint title hopes all but disappeared.
City have been on a downward spiral since losing Rodri to an ACL injury at the end of September and have lost six of their last eight top flight encounters. The eight-time champions have also lost two of their last three Champions League matches and were dumped out of the Carabao Cup by at the end of October.
And Warnock, who made 212 appearances during spells with , Blackburn and Aston Villa, has given his verdict on the situation at the Etihad Stadium.
The former left-back, in association with BetBrain, exclusively revealed to Express Sport: “Obviously there has been a lot of talk about the Rodri situation and I do think that’s had a big knock-on effect.
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Manchester City were defeated 2-1 by Aston Villa on Saturday (Image: GETTY)
“But I think what we’re seeing is a team that has never suffered in confidence and now they’re suffering in confidence. And they’ve never had to deal with this.
“It’s such a difficult thing to try and turn back on and the players are starting to sort of question each other at the moment and finding life difficult on the pitch.
“ has so often come up with an answer and at the moment he hasn’t found that answer to the system. They have had a lot of injuries as well. I don’t think we can hide behind that.
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“He does work with a small squad, albeit a very talented squad. But they’re finding it difficult to find those answers.
“What we’re seeing at and what ’s spoken about is the need for a little bit of a change of the guard if you like and he needs to freshen things up within the squad. And we’ll start to see that probably straight away in January.”
City will be aiming to turn their form around over the festive period and will be targeting maximum points when they host Everton on Boxing Day. The side then travel to Leicester next Sunday before beginning 2025 with a home clash against West Ham.