Almost all of the lights were out by the time Pep Guardiola began his two-and-a-half-mile journey home, swinging past the National Football Museum filled with Manchester City memorabilia of past and recent glories.
It was well gone midnight at that point, the Etihad Stadium empty. Eerily empty. Players had long fled the scene of City’s self-inflicted tragedy, that scarcely believable 3-3 draw against a Feyenoord team who had flooded the turf for commemorative pictures, and whose director general had joked with player of the match Hadj Moussa that the club had now sold him to the Premier League champions.
Wearing the physical scars of the most troubling month of his career, Guardiola had been locked inside his office long after all that, holding debriefs and consumed by his own thoughts. Sources said he had appeared lost when making his way back into the dressing room, powerless to stop the 15-minute capitulation – the likes of which City have managed before but not quite to this degree.
You imagine that lengthy period of contemplation had a dual purpose – the coming to terms of what and how that just happened, while nervously wondering about the weekend. Liverpool away. Not a happy trip for a fully fit and firing City, never mind this current iteration. They have won once at Anfield in the last 21 years – a 4-1 victory behind closed doors in the Covid season of 2020-21, when the depleted hosts were without Virgil van Dijk and in the middle of losing six consecutive home games.
In the present day, there is no tougher assignment in Europe and Guardiola has to engineer a response. Maybe those hours in the office prompted a lightbulb moment; we’ll find out at Anfield. City will have to hope so because defeat would mean an 11-point deficit, which even before Christmas and even for them, looks as close to insurmountable as logically possible.
The thing with Guardiola though is that he has been trying everything for weeks – and is beginning to appear worn out by it, wearing a forlorn expression as he parked up for work on Wednesday morning.
Pep Guardiola is enduring the most difficult period of his eight years as Manchester City boss
After City collapsed against Feyenoord to draw 3-3 on Tuesday in the Champions League having led 3-0, Guardiola appeared for his post-match press commitments with cuts all over his face
City have failed to win in six games, losing five, and travel to Liverpool on Sunday afternoon
There was a long team meeting after the defeat at Bournemouth, when opinions on performances were aired. Other times he has told them they are great, to not forget what they achieved a matter of months ago.
He has accepted the injury list and, beyond that, the nuance of owning medically available players who are incapable of properly competing due to fitness. He realises all of this and has communicated it publicly and privately; in the interim, the squad haven’t been able to harness any of it as motivation.
Looking at how they are starting games, nothing seems majorly problematic. On countless occasions City should have stretched into imposing leads but squandered chances – the 4-0 reverse against Tottenham last week a perfect example. Again, that’s not overly new. The new bit is that they aren’t relentlessly carving teams open thereafter and are leaking goals like it’s 2016. Statistically, they are giving up more chances than they are creating. Guardiola. City. It’s unheard of.
Even with 17 goals in all competitions, Erling Haaland is underperforming his xG (expected goals) by one, indicating that his finishing is not up to its usual standards. But that is not the fundamental issue – more that according to the xG list, the next highest expected tally is Phil Foden on 2.8 goals. Ilkay Gundogan is on 2.6 yet is now required in the defensive midfield position given Mateo Kovacic’s injury. If it’s not going to be Haaland, it’s nobody.
And the distress that the lack of creativity – alongside a defensive fragility accentuated by their high line – is causing was evident inside the dressing room on Tuesday night. Guardiola’s stewardship has always encouraged players holding each other to account and so the fact that there were raised voices, the calling out of individuals and units, will have likely given him some hope for the immediate future.
Objects were thrown in frustration. Hardly surprising given the general dissatisfaction and Gundogan – club captain when they won the Treble 18 months ago – came out and admitted that a routine 2-0 defeat by Feyenoord wouldn’t have felt quite this bad. A reminder: they did draw. A day off on Thursday provided light relief from the gloom.
There did seem a little bit more fire in the response than there had been following Tottenham – and not because the Feyenoord result means that making the Champions League top eight, and avoiding a play-off round, is now likely to be dependent on victories away at Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain.
Sunday’s warm-down session post-Spurs at the City Football Academy, across the road from the Etihad, was described as ‘very quiet’. Guardiola usually loves a Sunday, always out coaching those who hadn’t played the day before.
Insiders revealed post-match rows inside the dressing room, while objects were also thrown
Erling Haaland is underperforming his xG and City are conceding more chances than they create
Phil Foden has also struggled to recapture his best form so far this season for Guardiola’s side
This week was solemn among a group whose leadership team – Kyle Walker, Kevin De Bruyne, Ruben Dias, Bernardo Silva and Gundogan, without the injured Rodri – had agreed that this wasn’t the time for a big crisis meeting.
So disconsolate on Saturday, only Walker and the manager could be cajoled to conduct post-match television interviews for the long line of international broadcasters. Nobody was putting their hand up for those. Rafael Nadal’s pre-arranged visit to City’s base on Wednesday, spending time with the players, will have briefly lifted some spirits. Asked about Nadal on Friday, Guardiola said the Spaniard is proof that great champions cannot continue their dominance forever.
Messages coming through from those around the team this week have mirrored what supporters are saying. ‘I can’t believe it,’ one read. ‘This is nuts,’ said another.
The Guardiola new contract bounce has yet to arrive, with the team conceding seven in two home games since. The Catalan – who was not majorly thrilled that news of his surprise extension had emerged two days before the planned announcement – went through similar when signing a new deal in 2020, although the reasons are wildly different.
Then City were just coming out of the elongated trauma of that infamous European defeat by Lyon, in a Covid quarter-final they had been expected to breeze through. They recovered from a slump to win the title that year.
This slump comes on the back of making history with a fourth consecutive league title six months ago. And, while he has constantly insisted that the age of his squad has not tipped over towards too old, the prevailing feeling from the outside is the opposite.
On the surface, City’s transfer business has not been easy to manage over the past two years for outgoing sporting director Txiki Begiristain, who won manager of the year at the Golden Boy awards this week. Guardiola is rightly loyal to a more experienced bunch who have churned out stellar displays for seasons and, with no appetite to dislodge them while they were still performing at the highest level, City signed the cavalry rather than the front line.
Some of the raw younger talents – Jeremy Doku, Savinho – haven’t been ready for the weekly rigours and aren’t producing Riyad Mahrez’s numbers. Others signed in their peak – Kovacic, Matheus Nunes – plainly just aren’t as good as what has gone before. Whatever the circumstance – De Bruyne’s injury, Rodri’s absence, the dips of Gundogan and Jack Grealish – has ended up having a detrimental effect that is larger than we’ve previously witnessed.
City have been hamstrung by injuries to key players like Mateo Kovacic (L) and Ruben Dias (R)
The defeat by Spurs was a blow and City are yet to see the bounce of Guardiola’s extension
It is only months since City lifted an unprecedented fourth successive Premier League title
With a tough run in December coming up, Guardiola needs to turn around City’s slump fast
Could they have been more ruthless in this area? Definitely. But then, Guardiola fought hard to keep Walker after the Treble, as Bayern Munich tabled an attractive offer, and clearly felt losing the right back was not something they could cope with.
The De Bruyne resurgence after five months out last year was mesmeric. His comeback at Newcastle, scoring and assisting Oscar Bobb’s late winner, will stand up as one of the all-time great substitute appearances.
Personnel will not change drastically in the short term and it was noteworthy to learn that at least one player has recently been rebuked in training for not focusing properly during a tactical drill. There is a growing feeling within the industry that City will go out and land a midfielder in January, as detailed by Mail Sport on Monday. Real Sociedad’s Martin Zubimendi, Ederson at Atalanta and Adam Wharton have all been watched and a fresh face will offer something of a boost, as well as affording the chosen player a bedding-in period ahead of next season, in a way that really benefited Aymeric Laporte when he signed in the winter of 2018.
There are eight games before the January window opens though. The Christmas logjam includes Manchester United and Aston Villa away. Supporters are already preparing themselves for the festive period, commissioning inglorious scarves reading, ‘All I Want for Christmas is Three Points’ as a reaction to this slump. Ironic, just about. Their humour – and it is a fanbase whose match-going element remain renowned for their humour – was visible inside Mary D’s, a bar next to the stadium, last Saturday evening.
They sang about how ‘City’s lost five in a row,’ – altering the lyrics of a song about title wins – in a way to cope with the form. And the squad had noticed and appreciated how thousands stayed behind in their seats to applaud them after Spurs, chanting defiantly, in what ought to have been a moment to galvanise.
The Feyenoord collapse three days later suggested otherwise and boos were ringing out on full time, which Guardiola said he perfectly understood and sympathised with.
There is some discussion among supporters whether jeering is appropriate or not, given the unparalleled success of the last 10-15 years, and that can often be framed nostalgically. Just because City once lost at York City in 1998, a day accepted to be their nadir in the third tier, doesn’t mean booing now is wrong.
Maybe the players actually needed a bit of that at the end of what has been an awful month. Guardiola has gone six without winning once before. Never seven. He endures bad weeks, not bad months. November’s gone, although the trouble is that December doesn’t seem particularly enticing either.
