Carabao Cup final suggested Man City must recruit a striker carefully in the summer

With a couple of minutes remaining of Manchester City's 1-0 victory over Tottenham in the Carabao Cup final, the camera panned to Pep Guardiola on the touchline.

It was not a pretty sight.

His face resembled that of a man who had realised he had forgotten his ID, keys and to put the bins out while standing in a nightclub queue.

It may not be attractive but this is what makes Guardiola so well suited to coaching the best squad on the planet. His obsessive strive for perfection and desire to suck up trophies like a top of the range vacuum cleaner has turned City into an unfeeling winning machine since he arrived in England in 2016.

City's victory over Spurs means Guardiola has now won 14 of his 15 cup finals. Not bad, ay? In addition, their clean sheet means his teams have not conceded in nine of his last ten finals.

With stats like this, a Tottenham win would have taken a minor miracle. The first half gave little indication that Ryan Mason's charges had any chance of delivering said miracle either. The young manager instructed his team to prevent Fernandinho and Ilkay Gundogan receiving easy passes on the half-turn from the City defence.

To accomplish this, Lucas Moura and Son Heung-min stayed extremely narrow, which gave free reign for full-backs Joao Cancelo and Kyle Walker to hug the touchlines, giving their teammates an easy out ball.

More often than not Cancelo would eventually receive the ball deep enough in the Spurs half to provoke the opposition into engaging him. With Spurs dragged out of position, the neat combinations City have become famous for would begin, with a free-flowing foursome of Kevin De Bruyne, Phil Foden, Riyad Mahrez and Raheem Sterling doing the business.

Guardiola's side played some wonderful stuff, they really did, even after Spurs tweaked their press after the break. This level of flexibility was only possible thanks to their lack of an 'on the shoulder of the last man' striker as well. However, not for the first time this season finishing was a massive problem.

In the first half alone they fired away ten shots without converting, with Mahrez and most notably Foden squandering good opportunities. Their wastefulness continued and in the end, they had to be bailed out by an Aymeric Laporte header in the final ten minutes.

City would finish the game with a xG of around 3.5, an underperformance on 2.5. In addition, six Premier League teams have outperformed their xG by more than Guardiola's side this season. This is a metric City should be topping when you consider the mouth-watering amount of attacking talent at their disposal.

So, what is the solution? Well, if they want to tighten their grip over European football next season the Cityzens need to recruit a lethal finisher capable of opening a sizable tuck shop in Manchester, while not sacrificing too much of the team's freakish positional flexibility going forward.

The obvious choice in Erling Haaland. The Norwegian would certainly help on the finishing front but slotting him into City's system could prove a challenge. This applies for the vast majority of the other options touted for a move to Manchester in the summer as well.

Whoever they opt for, it is a decision they will need to get right if the trophy procession is to continue over the next decade. Then again, knowing Guardiola - a cultist for midfielders - they may opt to spit in the face of conventional wisdom and keep the strikerless party going.