Guardiola planned to build a new cathedral on a Dias-Laporte defence but Stones has emerged as key to team’s resurgence
Football feels at times almost wilfully contrarian, as though it delights in confounding those who try to plot a rational course through it. You can plan and plan and plan. You can have a manager who is famous for his attention to detail. You can study all the data, watch all the videos, think and plot and cogitate, formulate your grand strategy, then it turns out the answer all along was John Stones.
Manchester City needed a right-sided central defender, everybody said. They had Aymeric Laporte, who was probably alongside Virgil van Dijk the best central defender in the league, but he prefers the left side, so City’s job in the summer was to find somebody to play alongside him. In that area, it was widely agreed, their recruitment had gone a little awry.
Related: Guardiola's caution helps Stones shine and get back on England radar | Barney Ronay
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