The plane carrying the Leverkusen team had to return to the departure gate on Monday afternoon due to luggage problems in Germany, delaying their arrival in Manchester.
A day later, a senior member of Bayer Leverkusen’s staff was – in his own words – “shocked” by the number of changes at City on match day, telling BBC Sport that he had prepared appropriately for the contest, but was not expecting that particular line-up.
Another staff member pointed to the absence of key players such as defender Edmund Tapsoba, former Real Madrid player Lucas Vazquez and Argentinian pair Exquiel Palacios and Iqui Fernandez as a sign they could struggle in the game, with six players from the under-19 squad named on the bench.
Star men and goal machines Erling Haaland, Phil Foden and Ryan Cherky were substitutes for City in the opening period and when called upon late on were ultimately unable to make saves in the second half.
Omar Marmoush failed to convert his chances as he attempted to excite the home crowd who were often as flat as the team, while Savinho and Oscar Bob were both on the periphery of the game.
City were slow, difficult and the changes let them down and this could be a damaging defeat in the competition – defeat means they will be away to European giants Real Madrid on 10 December under pressure to get some sort of result.
“He tried to do that (performance) but when you are in a big team you have to show off,” Guardiola said. “Everyone – (including) the guys coming off the bench – were the same. Every shot was blocked, they slipped 10 times.
“Maybe with the players playing regularly recently, maybe we would have gained confidence. I always like to be very good and get everyone involved because I think after the international break the expectation is to have games every three or four days and no man can sustain that.”
Guardiola became the third manager, after Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger, to take charge of 100 or more Champions League games for an English team, but the historic occasion was one to forget.
“The message from a lot of people will be, why didn’t you play a stronger team?” asked former City midfielder Michael Brown on BBC Radio 5 Live. “Win games and then make changes, that’s what people will say.
“There was almost an expectation that it was just going to be routine, but what it did with those changes was give the away team a big boost. If you’re walking onto the pitch you’ll be thinking we’ve got a great chance with all those players sitting on the bench. It gave them confidence.
“That said, you still feel that City could have had a much better performance with the players they had.”
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