Manchester City 0-2 Bayer Leverkusen: Has Pep Guardiola made a lot of changes?

A luggage issue in Germany meant the plane carrying the Leverkusen squad had to return to the departure gate on Monday afternoon, delaying their arrival in Manchester.

A day later, City’s plethora of match-day adjustments left a senior member of Bayer Leverkusen’s squad – in his words – “shocked”, telling BBC Sport they had made the necessary preparations for the contest but were not expecting this particular line-up.

Another employee pointed to the unavailability of key players such as defender Edmund Tapsoba, former Real Madrid player Lucas Vazquez and Argentine duo Exequiel Palacios and Equi Fernandez, as a sign that they could struggle in the match, with six players from the Under-19 squad on the bench.

Star and goal machine Erling Haaland, Phil Foden and Ryan Chergui were all substitutes for City in the opening period and when called on later were ultimately unable to pull off a rescue in the second half.

Omar Marmoush failed to take his chance in attack and tried to excite the home fans who were often as static as the team, while Savinho and Oscar Pope were on the sidelines of the match.

City have been slow and clunky and the changes have left them disjointed and they could end up with a devastating defeat in the competition – a loss meaning they head to European giants Real Madrid on December 10 under pressure to get some sort of results.

“They tried to do this [perform] “But when you are in a big team you have to show off,” Guardiola said. [including] The guys who came off the bench were the same. Every shot was blocked, and they skidded 10 times.

“Maybe with the players who have been playing regularly recently, maybe we had confidence. I always like to be very nice and get everyone involved because I feel after the international break there are games every three or four days and I hope there is no human being who can handle that.”

Guardiola became the third manager to take charge of 100 or more Champions League matches for an English team after Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger, but this historic occasion was an unforgettable one.

“The message from a lot of people will be, ‘Why didn’t you play for a stronger team?’ asked former City midfielder Michael Brown on BBC Radio 5 Live. “Win the game and then make the changes, that’s what people will say.

“There was almost an expectation that it was just going to be routine, but what it did with those changes was give the away team a huge boost. If you walked onto the pitch looking across to the other side, you would think we had a big chance with all those players on the bench. That gave them belief.”

He added: “However, you still feel that the performance could have been much better from City with the players they have.”