{"id":656262,"date":"2026-05-08T15:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T15:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/656262\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T15:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T15:50:09","slug":"manchester-city-how-important-is-rodri-to-pep-guardiolas-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/656262\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester City: How important is Rodri to Pep Guardiola’s side?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the course of Rodri’s hugely successful Manchester City<\/a> career, one thing is plain; Pep Guardiola’s side are a better team with him than without him.<\/p>\n

It’s a view backed up by the data. Since his debut in August 2019, City have a better win percentage, score more goals, concede fewer goals, and have more possession in Premier League games when the Spaniard plays compared to when he is absent.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of those absences have come in the past two seasons. When City charged to an unprecedented four league titles in a row, Rodri missed just seven matchday squads – and three of those were through suspension.<\/p>\n

At the start of the 2024-25 season, an ACL tear sustained five weeks before he won the Ballon d’Or meant he missed more than seven months of action; Liverpool<\/a> won the league.<\/p>\n

His current campaign has been blighted by a hamstring problem, but reassuringly for City fans, the numbers suggest Guardiola’s squad is learning to cope without the 29-year-old. <\/p>\n

Of the 11 games he missed between late September and New Year’s Day, City won nine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the course of Rodri’s hugely successful Manchester City career, one thing is plain; Pep Guardiola’s side are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-656262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}