Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola looks on during his side's defeat at Anfield - Man City should be flattered by fact everyone else is loving their crisis
Pep Guardiola, deep in thought, watches his Manchester City side lose to Liverpool at a rocking Anfield
It is the suburban kids of South East England you have to feel most sorry for. They are a new breed in playing fields from Basingstoke to Basildon, mixing it with the traditional Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United cohort in their sky blue shirts. They glommed on to Manchester City as a guarantee of success, now they must experience their first real taste of football misery. Dry your eyes.
Sympathy is limited whenever a great team crumbles, especially when they have been world-conquering like Pep Guardiola’s six-time champions. If you have been following football for roughly 40 years you have lived through several dynasties, some which went on so long it became difficult to see how they might be toppled. Usually they are associated with a manager: Alex Ferguson’s United, Bob Paisley then Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool and now Guardiola’s City.
There has been something inevitable to their success until now which makes their miserable winless run in the past five weeks difficult to process. In their past few games there have been dozens of moments that feel like glitches in the Matrix.
Phil Foden receiving the ball on the edge of the box against Feyenoord, spinning off his man with a delicious heel flick and instead of finding the bottom corner putting his shot too close to the keeper. Three-nil down against Spurs but still half-expecting to win, Josko Gvardiol passing to Erling Haaland in space for a back-post header, then sending it over at such a wild trajectory it was as if the Nike Flight 24-25 had transformed mid-cross into a beachball. Guardiola breaking the technical area’s fourth wall to engage with Liverpool fans goading him about getting sacked in the morning and holding up six fingers, an unfortunate choice when you are losing your sixth game in seven.
Pep Guardiola wasted little time in reminding Liverpool supporters how many Premier League titles he has won
Pep Guardiola wasted little time in reminding Liverpool supporters how many Premier League titles he has won
We are so used to seeing City’s unfaltering finishing, faultless defending and mastery of a match’s rhythm and mood. Currently all are Awol and the manager is more flustered than we have ever known him. It is hard to watch, if you like them or what Guardiola has brought to football. Many do not, and are revelling in their apparent downfall. There is plenty to unpack here.
You can understand the glee at Anfield. Liverpool fans watched their team comprehensively outplay City, against whom they have endured so many exhaustingly tight battles. Yet there is a wider pleasure detectable about City’s struggles which speaks to some British sensibilities about sport. America reveres its dynastic teams and athletes, we feast on their demise.
There is a mistrust for extended superiority, sadistic pleasure in a fall from grace and pine for a return to the 12-year span from 1967-78 when eight different teams won the league. Since then the list of title winners shows long spells of dominance for a handful of clubs. Unless you support one of them, their declines have been times for celebration.
‘Some feel their brilliance has gone on for long enough’
City have mostly been spared this crowing. A fair number of 30 to 50-somethings were scarred for life by Liverpool then Manchester United winning everything in sight and will always welcome another team having their turn. City do not have the years of past glory which can breed entitlement among fans, it will take today’s children to reach their 20s for widespread “Anyone But City” sentiment to take hold.
For now at least, that is all changing. The alleged financial breaches threaten to add an enormous asterisk to everything City have achieved. The human rights record of the state which funds them makes them irredeemable to some. Yet there is also a simpler feeling that their brilliance has gone on for long enough. Plenty are excited by the prospect of one of football’s great shifts where everything is briefly, thrillingly, up for grabs.
All of this should be tempered by recognition of the near-impossibility of what Guardiola has achieved. City winning might have become monotonous but that overlooks the near-constant renewal of their team. At one point the starting spot of Sergio Agüero was a source of psychodrama, then the question of how to replace him. How quaint that seems now, three years and two inverted full-backs later, given what Haaland has achieved and how seamlessly City have changed their approach.
That is the sort of thing even the best teams struggle with, which is partly why City have felt so secure as the best in the country for most of the Guardiola era. It would be foolish to write them off and perhaps this is just a fallow year, a curio to break up an otherwise imperious run.
But for now there is some crude delight at this extended glimpse of a future when, once again, City are highly beatable. Just like everyone else.