Still, at least Manchester City can now concentrate on the Ballon d’Or. There was a lavish celebration for the world’s best player before this game: the word RODRI illuminated in giant letters on the pitch like a Vegas cabaret show, City’s injured midfield linchpin holding his trophy aloft as fireworks lit the night sky. The tailoring was immaculate; the audiovisuals impressive; the crowd rapt.
And then came a game of football, in which the champions were beaten 4-0 by a team with Radu Dragusin and Ben Davies at centre-half. It was City’s biggest home defeat in more than two decades: the sort of result that draws small involuntary gasps, that causes spectators to get their phones out and zoom in on the scoreboard, capturing for posterity this curious rip in the space‑time fabric.
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What it was not, however, was a shock. At least, not for anyone more than vaguely acquainted with City’s football over recent weeks. A fifth consecutive loss – six if you count the Premier League vote on associated party transactions on Friday – is of less significance than the recurring manner of those losses: City being undone not by fluke or happenstance but by teams who were simply braver than them, stronger, more imaginative, more united.
And yes, City keep getting done on the counterattack. But just as relevant as the counterattack is what comes before and after: the limp and uncoordinated efforts to win the ball back, the reluctant and rote shuffling back into position, second and third runners not being picked up, the 50-50s not being won. These are issues not of tactics or shape but of conditioning, physical and mental.
Nor is this simply a Rodri problem, as brilliant a player as he is, as yawning the gaps were in midfield here as Tottenham poured forward with numbers. The malaise here is collective: witness the first goal, as a puffing Ilkay Gündogan simply lets James Maddison go, delegating what should have been his job with an urgent outstretched arm that nobody sees. But Josko Gvardiol also lets Dejan Kulusevski cut inside, the centre-halves fail to space correctly, and there was insufficient pressure on the ball to begin with.
The common theme here: everyone is relying on someone else to bail them out. There is a sense of shirked responsibility here, of leaving the extra yard to others. Again with the second goal in the 20th minute, Gvardiol with the slack pass to Gündogan, nobody covering Maddison’s reverse run. Again with the third, Kulusevski simply shrugging off Phil Foden, City players bumping into each other like Minions, Spurs tearing up the field and scoring again.
No champion team should ever be this fatally reliant on a single man. Pep Guardiola has found solutions in the past and will doubtless find them again. But right now he needs his players to step up. Since his sparkling start to the season Erling Haaland has scored two goals in his last seven league games, from an xG of 7.8. In short, he is basically finishing about as well as you would with his chances at the moment.
What this means, on the other hand, is anyone’s guess. Is this an implosion? The end of an era? Or basically the characteristic autumn blip from a team who are still second in the league and will probably still romp to the title by five points? In short, are we the ones overthinking this?
Maybe. Certainly Guardiola was in bullish mood after this game, assuring us this group of players were still champion footballers, that he still had everything he needed to turn this around. But even if this run of results is unprecedented, there have been enough portents – Wolves, Fulham, Inter, Arsenal – to suggest this is a trend rather than an anomaly.
Guardiola talks a lot about his trophies these days. He rarely misses an opportunity to blazon what this team have achieved, to celebrate and revel in their dominance. And, you know, fair enough. But perhaps it is also the hallmark of a regime increasingly preoccupied with projection, with how things look and are portrayed.
The timing of his new contract announcement, which frankly could have happened any time between now and May. The legal battle with the Premier League, the furious briefings, the litany of documentaries and content, a Ballon d’Or celebration immediately before a key league game. Of course a little aura and hubris is no bad thing. But it needs to be tied to fundamentals.
Right now, those fundamentals are absent. What remains is a club being run on vibes and past glories, a team that basically looks a little drunk right now on its own imperial grandeur. Perhaps this is not yet the time to burn things down and start again. But it is at least worth asking whether this team has anything new to show us.
