Guardiola was eager to highlight the huge changes to personnel City have undergone over the past 12 months.
After the nervy win, Guardiola declared: “It’s Tijjani (Reijnders’) first season, Nico O’Reilly’s first season playing in that position, Matheus (Nunes’) first season playing in that position, Nico Gonzalez’s first year playing a lot.
“(Mateo) Kovacic and Rodri - the Ballon d’Or winner alongside Erling Haaland as the most important player that we have - one year and a half we don’t have him, we don’t have replacements for Nico in that position, Rayan Cherki is new.
“Today, in the last minutes, Rayan Cherki and Bernardo (Silva) and Nico O’Reilly was the key to keeping less chances to concede the goal.
“In the last minutes, especially Rayan was exceptional.
“What can I say? Improve, and there were many good things, and the bad things?
“We’ll improve.”
He added, “I think for the team, changing seven, eight, nine players in two transfer windows, it’s a question of growing.
“And that will be a good lesson for the future.”