Manchester City have suffered nine defeats in 12 games in eight weeks and the world of football has turned upside down, but at least Pep Guardiola has identified the problem.
Guardiola told the BBC's cameras after Saturday's defeat at Villa Park: “I haven't yet scored the goals I scored before. And I conceded goals I didn't concede.” He spoke in that now familiar watery, rambling voice. A man's voice being urged by paramedics to talk about defensive injuries and midfield match-ups to keep him awake until the ambulance arrives.
So, that's it. Let's score more goals. You'll lose fewer points. Let's win instead of lose. This is a team that used to suck the emotions out of their opponents, but instead of just winning, they've become zombified, hardened, and even strangely ominous and meandering possession-based football, an expression of the death of love. Pep's razor-sharp explanation of the period. , life, hope.
So. How on earth did that happen? And is it permissible to blame the director himself for this at any stage? As City prepare for their visit to Everton on Boxing Day, there are two things to say about their journey so far.
What is most surprising is the magnitude of the decline. This is perhaps the most serious implosion of any modern champion team.
Almost exactly one year ago until today, a team with 10 players took to the pitch at Villa Park and defeated Fluminense 4-0 in Jeddah. At that moment, City unified the belts and became the first club to simultaneously win the Champions League, Premier League, Club World Cup, FA Cup and UEFA Super Cup. The peaks were scaled. There were no other peaks. This was it. All these things under the sun I give you.
There was a well-deserved sense of victory in this accomplishment. “His exploits on the pitch are the byproduct of a captivating and captivating style of play,” City's website concludes. This might have been a little too mature for the Haaland-centric era, but seeing the current Eleven ramble about things like this seems doubly impressive. Like an unhappy robot.
“The players are still hungry and motivated,” Guardiola assured the world, and for quite some time this seemed to be entirely true. City never lost a game, apart from penalties, until the FA Cup final in May. Fourteen games into this season, they have lost one more game. At this point, enter “Total Coagulation”.
This is the second point about the City's expansion beyond the coastal shelf. There is no clear explanation for this. Everyone was emitting an aura, and the team, which had a spear-like presence, became a stuffed-shirt, straw man with an anti-presence.
As always, explanations tend to be divided into macro and micro views of history. The details are always the deciding factor. But we are still obsessed with overarching narratives. So, a more solid analysis suggests that if you take a Ballon d'Or winner from any team and have one or two key injuries in defence, there will naturally be dropouts.
City have dropped 24 points since Rodri's injury, including the game against Arsenal where the incident occurred. This is a key position for Guardiola's team and its absence affects every other part of the car. Without that source of control in midfield, players all over the pitch will be asked to win duels, make chases and hurries, and do things outside of their primary skill set.
If we reintroduced Rodri for that period, could we really talk about Guardiola's style changes like collapses, ghost ships, head wounds, and dying Jedi knights?
At the other end of the scale is macro theory. First is the cumulative impact of hidden financial costs. There was a time when it looked like the struggle with the Premier League gave City's project a defiant dynamic. Here are the richest clubs in the world, winning order at the behest of monarchies, free to present themselves as underdogs, bashing conspiracies, shaking their fists and playing the victim, and all that. must be at least oddly liberating. For a while.
Soccer players have a unique ability to focus on the task at hand. However, humans are not meant to block water. People talk, plan and think about the future. Agents never stop being agents. It would be very strange if there wasn't some sort of ripple effect somewhere down the pipe.
The second theory here is that Guardiola himself is the source of some of this anti-energy. City's entropy has become chronic since the much-touted contract extension. The suggestion, so far only chatter and speculation, is that some senior players who have been playing for a long time are actually quite looking forward to the natural change in energy. Guardiola is both exhausting and exhilarating. He wins by pushing you to the limit and instilling complete control. That's fine as long as you're winning. What happens beyond that point? It's probably like this.
However, Guardiola also has a simpler point here. Even the most successful and influential managers of our time can reach their own limits. There was a clear ominous atmosphere between Pep and the player, and for the first time a rift between the team and the coach who had completely defined this project.
Guardiola's health has been a concern for the past few weeks. Dark talk is swirling about the Regent's health. My body is weak. The nation is sick. We hear about his terrible sleep patterns, indigestion, and dry skin on his skull. This man, whose body beats, throbs, and throbs with football, is essentially an avatar of his job, a host to an obsession on the outside that makes him move, jump, and His thin arms were twitching.
After newsletter promotion
Perhaps the most worrying thing is the lack of vital signs for the past few weeks, the obsessive feeling of being attached to something in standby mode and now separated from him. It's a process that may have its origins in the final push to the top.
The signing of Erling Haaland always felt like a contradiction. Here, a coach defined by his obsession with passing football has come to embrace a star player who basically doesn't engage in passing football at all, who represents football in a condensed form, and who is a scoring machine. I did. The idea of Guardiola building a team around Haaland remains somewhat absurd on its own, much like James Joyce deciding to write a world-class book of knock-knock jokes.
But there was always something about the treble-winning season that felt like a deal with the devil. Here we have a mature team that is good enough to absorb players who add nothing to the existing rhythm and provide only the last bit of brilliance. That team will continue to be able to keep the ball well, control games well and continue to be on this razor's edge.
But will being a non-integrated organization for the first time really improve this team in the long term? The idea that Haaland's addition was a success rests entirely on a one-goal victory in the Champions League final, rather than a one-goal defeat in the Champions League final without Haaland. Manager Guardiola also defeated his own choices in this match.
Haaland is all about numbers. Here are some interesting ones. In the past five seasons without him, City have scored more goals than in the two and a half seasons with him. Haaland averages 2.3 goals per game. Without him, it would have been 2.6 times. With Haaland in the team, we conceded more goals. What's the point of being a Killer or a Razor if you don't actually score more goals?That was true even before the collapse.
In many ways, all of these micro-issues come together under Haaland's umbrella. City look tactically old. The midfield seems to be full of holes. Other managers have found that they are vulnerable to strong ball carriers. There is cause and effect.
Haaland has contributed little, both in and out of possession. But he's expendable in other areas as well. He averages seven short passes per game. Playing with 10 people will end up taking a toll on you. That related pain will come out. Why does City's aging midfielder seem so exposed? How easy is this to carry?
At the same time, Haaland was not the kind of guy to build new structures or find other ways to win, and instead was basically given a pass and treated like a kind of captive bear, with the leg irons It is also simply accepted that he is not the kind of person to peg without condemnation.
The poor signature reflects this trend toward shrinkage, a leaner organization. Haaland was the last really impactful addition and the last to change the way the team played. At £77 million, Josko Gvardiol has achieved the success he is entitled to. Before that, let's look at Manuel Akanji two years ago, Nathan Ake and Ruben Diaz four years ago, and Rodri in 2019.
Instead, the past 12 months have seen stagnation. This team remains moored to the simplification that perfected it, tied to an ever-diminishing circle around a fixed point on the front.
Players are not growing. The manager couldn't find the other cogs and instead seemed trapped in a shell of himself. “There's nothing else to win. I feel like the job is done, it's done,” Guardiola said in the moment of ultimate victory, and his words become more prescient with each passing week. It feels like.
