‘You learn who you can go to war with’: Bernardo Silva reveals lessons from Man City’s ‘bad’ season

The club will end their campaign without silverware following defeat to Crystal Palace in the FA Cup final

Bernardo Silva lamented Man City’s drop in standards this season after their FA cup defeat to Crystal Palace (EPA)

It is three decades since the FA Cup was won by the ‘dogs of war’. It is fair to say Pep Guardiola has never modelled his midfields on the scrappers and scufflers who brought Joe Royle’s Everton glory in 1995. But, some 30 years on, after another FA Cup final that a Manchester club entered as favourites and lost 1-0 to underdogs, the lament from Bernardo Silva was that a Guardiola side had too few warriors.

The Portuguese has looked around many an underachieving Manchester City dressing room this season, asked who he would want alongside him in the trenches and concluded: not enough of them. It was a damning verdict, that City had been softened by success. The lessons from their worst season since 2016-17 – and, should they fail to qualify for the Champions League, their worst since 2009-10 – may be painful for a club accustomed to glory.

“You learn a lot of new things,” said Silva. “In the bad moments you learn new things. Who you can go to war with, first of all. Because it's in the bad moments that you see who the real ones are. And a lot of things that were good for us to not take things for granted, for our fans, for the club. And yeah, don't lower our standards.”

He is not alone in thinking City had lost a little of their hunger. Ruben Dias and Erling Haaland had voiced similar thoughts before the FA Cup final defeat to Crystal Palace. That was compounded by the shifting dynamics in the English game, the way that clubs like Palace have allied an ability to scrap with genuine talent, personified by the scorer Eberechi Eze. It was a one-off result in one respect, but not in others. City have also lost to Bournemouth, Brighton and Nottingham Forest, three of the ambitious, upwardly mobile sides in the Premier League.

“I know we've got people used to winning every year,” said Silva. “And people demand this team to win every year. Football is a tough sport and it's not easy to beat these teams, especially in the Premier League. Like today, this team has a lot of individual quality. If you go and look around teams in the Premier League, all of them have two, three players that are unbelievable players. Our level needs to be very, very high to be champions again. And that's the level that we want to reach again.”

If there was an encouraging element to the message, it was that Silva seemed to be committing himself to stay. City are accustomed to the annual suggestions he would leave, knowing he preferred the Mediterranean to the Mancunian climate, aware Barcelona had a long-standing interest in him, albeit a reluctance to pay much money for him. There was the thought that, approaching his 31st birthday, with Guardiola having concluded his midfield were too old, that Silva’s time could be up. He indicated that he is unlikely to follow Kevin de Bruyne to the exit, that he wants to stay and fight.

Bernardo Silva is frustrated by the 'lack of warriors' in Man City squad (EPA)

And while Silva is a terrific technician, a reason Guardiola always loved him was his willingness to fight for the cause, to sweat as he covered many a mile. This has not been his finest season: he has been overworked, his form suffering amid a malaise.

“It's a really, really bad season for us,” he said. “Something has to change next year. It's for the big bosses to decide. I have my opinion but definitely something needs to change when you don't perform at this level.”

By his comments, he implied that the mentality has to, perhaps the personnel. Some of City’s proven warriors are ageing, and De Bruyne is definitely departing. The safe assumption is that the injured Rodri was exempted from Silva’s criticisms and probably Dias, too. In different ways, the bodies of the injured John Stones and Nathan Ake and the immobile Ilkay Gundogan have let them down. Of the younger contingent, Haaland, who has at least mustered 30 goals amid a collective relapse, and Josko Gvardiol, City’s probable player of the year, presumably meet Silva’s criteria of “real ones”.

After a trophyless campaign Bernardo Silva says Man City need to 'raise their levels' again (Nick Potts/PA Wire)

Which could put the burden of proof on some of the others. The quartet signed for in excess of £170m in January, for instance: not so much because Omar Marmoush missed a penalty in the FA Cup final but because arguably none of the Egyptian, Nico Gonzalez, Abdukodir Khusanov or Vitor Reis figures in the strongest side. Then there is Jeremy Doku, forever dribbling without much end product, but showing a reluctance to track back. There are those who struggled in combat as City lost 16 times this season; maybe the captain who quit the battlefield, in Kyle Walker.

This season, they have lost the battles; fail to clamber back into the top five and they will have the most costly of defeats in the war. And for a stalwart of the Treble-winning side, a survivor of the days when standards were far higher, the remedy is obvious, City need more warriors.