Pep Guardiola during the Manchester derby
Guardiola blamed himself for Manchester City’s performance in defeat
“More than a manager”: that was the message written in Catalan across a giant tifo in the stands. It was as if Manchester City fans sensed that the sorcerer from Santpedor, the man meant to have the answer to every conundrum, could use a little flattery himself. In the end, even the love-bombing backfired, with Amad Diallo’s audacious finish from the cutest angle deepening a crisis without parallel in Pep Guardiola’s majestic career. He was gloomy enough when his team scored, shaking his head at his assistants as if the goal were scarcely deserved. By the time the final whistle sounded at an emptying Etihad, his face was a mask of torment.
For the first time in 16 years of record dominance, Guardiola looks bereft of answers. On paper, this is every inch his team, with almost all the linchpins of the treble triumph present and correct besides Rodri. But in terms of poise, rhythm and execution, it is the palest imitation, with the scarring of eight defeats in 11 so profound that these same players now panic at the first sign of a setback. You can see it in the lost soul that is Kyle Walker. Once the indomitable right-back whom no striker could outstrip for pace, he resorted here to crumpling embarrassingly under the faintest nuzzling from Rasmus Hojlund. Such are the symptoms of fading self-belief.
“I’m not good enough.” Guardiola kept repeating those words, more often than was healthy, after City’s latest shattering result. To lose once in this fashion might be passed off as misfortune, but the damning evidence is that this type of implosion – letting in two goals in two minutes just when it seemed they had weathered the worst – has become a pattern. In all eight of their losses in the past 6½ weeks, the damage has been sustained in clusters. City, usually a study in resilience, also conceded two in five minutes at Brighton, two in seven at home to Tottenham, and three in 15 against Feyenoord. It is as if the merest wobble prefigures a full-systems meltdown.
Man City dejection
Rúben Dias and Erling Haaland look dejected after the defeat by City
That weakness is antithetical to everything that Guardiola teaches. His sides are meant to be armour-plated, not stricken with a soft underbelly. But this is City’s reality, where disintegrating under pressure is less a problem than a pathology. “I’m not doing well, that’s the truth,” the manager said, and you did not doubt he meant it. There were no scratches on his head this time, but his insistence on being immaculate in every department comes at a price. It dictates that the more City neglect to heed his instructions, the more personally he takes the failure.
Questions once unimaginable are starting to be asked. Was Guardiola wondering, after 8½ years at City, whether he still had the energy or the magic to keep this club at the level he wanted? He was adamant that the spirit had not waned, that the pervasive pessimism around City – encapsulated by the smattering of boos as United celebrated wildly – was merely a product of a short-term funk. As for the magic, he was less convincing. After all, even the most wired managers have a point where their defiance is exhausted, with Jürgen Klopp admitting at the same stage of his Liverpool tenure that he was a spent force. “I never said I was a magician,” Guardiola said, with the thinnest smile. “But I want it desperately.”
Against United, it felt as if City were almost too desperate to staunch the bleeding. Once Josko Gvardiol’s clever header had steered them into the lead, they sought uncharacteristically to protect that advantage with their lives. With United struggling to conjure much inspiration until a frantic late flurry, it seemed a viable tactic. But then the neuroses resurfaced in time-honoured style, with Matheus Nunes ruining an otherwise assured performance with a witless error, flattening Diallo to give away the penalty that restored United’s faith. And again, barely believably, one individual horror show was all it took for the collective resistance to collapse.
Guardiola hardly knew which way to turn when Diallo conjured his magnificent winner on the run, sinking to his haunches and mirroring his side’s broken soul. He could not escape the pitch fast enough, apparently at a loss to understand either how this had happened or how he could fix it. For somebody of his technical wizardry, a solution is almost always at hand. Not on this occasion, though: while he correctly diagnosed that his players were paralysed with anxiety – “the worst thing is for a defender to be anxious,” he lamented – he offered no prediction of an instant upturn.
This is a malaise that speaks for itself. City, astonishingly, have lost more Premier League games by mid-December than they did across the entire span of last season’s title-winning run. They have the worst points-per-game ratio since November 1, at 0.57, of anybody in the league.
They have conceded more goals this season than either Everton or Crystal Palace. Once all-conquering, they are not waving but drowning. And worst of all is the fact that Guardiola, their one true genius, seems incapable of throwing them a lifejacket.
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