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#3 Claudio Bravo
Claudio Bravo arrived with his former Barcelona boss Pep Guardiola with much fanfare in the summer of 2016, but the Chilean shot-stopper never got going at the Etihad.
The ball-playing keeper was brought to Manchester City as Pep Guardiola prefers his teams to play the ball from the back. However, Bravo failed to adapt to the English game. He was a bundle of nerves in his first season at the club, producing costly errors galore, despite playing 39 times in all competitions.
With the arrival of Ederson the next summer, Bravo unsurprisingly ceased to be the first-choice custodian under Pep Guardiola.
Largely restricted to playing in Cup games in the next three seasons, Bravo would make only 22 more appearances at the club before announcing his departure from the Etihad at the end of the 2019-20 season.
#2 Mario Gotze
Mario Gotze etched his name into German folklore after scoring the winner in the 2014 FIFA World Cup final against Argentina that delivered Die National Mannschaft their fourth triumph in the quadrennial tournament.
That was after the former Borussia Dortmund player had scored ten times in his first season at Bayern Munich, his arrival at the club coinciding with that of Pep Guardiola.
The diminutive player, with his dribbling ability, astute reading of the game and impeccable ball-distribution prowess, seemed to have the wherewithal to flourish under Pep Guardiola like a Messi or Iniesta did at Barcelona. However, that was not to be.
Blighted by injuries, Gotze's attacking output and defensive prowess, which was never his standout attribute to begin with, began to drop alarmingly. In fact, he became a pale shadow of the player that won consecutive Bundesliga titles at Borussia Dortmund.
After three unhappy seasons in Bavaria, Goeze was back at his boyhood club Borussia Dortmund in the summer of 2016, but he was no longer the same player he once was.
#1 Zlatan Ibrahimovich
At the outset, it must be said that Zlatan Ibrahimovich is one of the finest players to have graced the game. However, the player failed to prosper under Pep Guardiola after his arrival at Barcelona in the summer of 2009.
The prolific Swede made a blistering start to life at the Camp Nou, but things began quickly unraveling for Zlatan Ibrahimovich when he was moved out of his favored position as center-forward to accommodate a certain Lionel Messi.
The much-travelled Ibrahimovich, who had a decent return of 21 goals in 45 games in all competitions in his only season in Spanish football, reportedly had a fallout with Pep Guardiola and left the club at the end of the season.
"'It started well, but then Messi started to talk. He wanted to play in the middle, not on the wing, so the system changed from 4–3–3 to 4–5–1. I was sacrificed, and I no longer had the freedom on the pitch I need to succeed, Ibrahimovic later wrote about his Barcelona days in his autobiography.
The failure of the player to adapt may be a discussion for another day, but Pep Guardiola's Barcelona clearly would have prospered had they found a way to accommodate the prolific striker in their plans.
