Pep Guardiola’s chopping and changing is costing Manchester City

FORGET the brawling.

It’s Pep Guardiola’s tendency to tinker that is really hurting Manchester City at the moment.

Antonio Conte’s side made it eight straight wins for the leaders to leave skipper Gary Cahill proclaiming they are back where they belong after the dark days last term under Jose Mourinho.

All the talk afterwards was of the fighting and two red cards sparked by Sergio Aguero’s brainless lunge at David Luiz.

The dust from that is still to settle with more FA charges likely to follow.

But a look at the team sheets this season may give a clue to why City trail Chelsea by four points.

Conte made one enforced change for the game – the first time in eight matches – when he brought in Cesc Fabregas for the injured Nemanja Matic.

That means the Italian has made a grand total of eight changes to his starting 11 over the entire league season to date.

In contrast, Guardiola has made a staggering 46 changes in the same spell – with more to come with Aguero and Fernandinho facing lengthy suspensions for their sendings off.

Asked about the settled nature of the side Cahill said: “I think that helps.

“Everyone is playing well, working to the system. It helps all of us.

“We’ve got a few players out, hopefully we’ll have them back soon.

“We’ve worked well together, we know how to play that system and if we have to change a little bit we can do that.”

Guardiola would love to have a system and a regular line-up delivering like that at the moment.

Instead, his constant changes have been forced on him by injuries, suspensions, formation changes and some dips in form.

The City defence – Nicolas Otamendi in particular – looked a disaster in gifting goals to Diego Costa, Willian and Eden Hazard.

And, in a prickly press conference afterwards, even Guardiola had to admit that all his chopping and changing could be an issue.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said.

“I don’t know if it’s a problem. We’re going game by game.

“I understood the best way to attack them as much as possible like we did.

“We created chances, put in crosses in front of the goalkeeper and we did it.

“I don’t think we lost because of the defensive problems.

“When we play better and better and better we will concede few chances and will score more goals. That’s what we can do in the next period.”

Guardiola saw his team take a deserved lead through a Cahill own goal before a string of missed chances opened the door for the visitors.

They took that invitation clinically to underline just what an amazing job Conte has done – in stark contrast to the disaster Mourinho presided over with the same group of players this time last season.

Cahill said: “I hope we’re back. We are not even at Christmas yet so I don’t want to talk too much but at the same time I’m sure teams don’t want to play against us at the minute.

“Last year was a blip since I’ve been part of the club and every year apart form that we have won something or been competing.

“So I suppose we are back to a bit of normality and competing at the top of the table again.

“This league is more demanding and more close than it has ever has been since I have been playing and there are a lot of teams to look out for.”

City can only hope they are one of those teams pushing Chelsea for the title in the new year.

Defender John Stones said: “There is quite a sour feeling running through everyone’s mind. It is a difficult one to take in the end.

“The scoreline didn’t reflect the way we played. In my opinion we should have won 3-1. But that’s football.”