On Tuesday, Manchester City suffered a 2-0 defeat to Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League at the Etihad.
Alejandro Grimaldo opened the scoring in the 23rd minute and Patrik Schick doubled the lead in the second half.
Manchester City had better possession [54%] and more shots on target [8] than Bayer Leverkusen. However, the Citizens weren’t able to find the back of the net.
Wednesday’s edition of Bild explains the German club were without 11 first team players, and six U19 players were on the bench yesterday.
Pep Guardiola made wholesale changes, leaving Erling Haaland, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Jérémy Doku, Phil Foden, Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva out of the starting lineup. Bild says this was a ‘tactical blunder’ from the Citizens manager and it backfired.
The newspaper didn’t hold back when grading Manchester City players.
Manchester City player ratings
Manchester City player ratings from Bild
Whilst most ratings are out of 10, or sometimes 5, Bild use the German school grading system. 1 means very good, 2 is good, 3 is average, 4 is passable but still lacking, 5 is deficient and 6 is insufficient. A 6 is the lowest possible grade and, taking it back to the school grades, it means that not only were things not up to standard, but there was even a failure to understand the basics.
Abdukodir Khusanov, Savinho and Omar Marmoush all received 5, meaning their performances were ‘deficient’. Rico Lewis, John Stones, Rayan Aït-Nouri and Nico González were rated 4.
James Strafford, Oscar Bobb, Nathan Aké and Tijjani Reijnders were said to be average and were rated 3. Guardiola got 5.