After a poor run of form, Manchester City are in danger of letting their season fizzle out. But what has been going wrong, and can Pep Guardiola fix their problems quickly?
Rewind just 24 days to 29 December, and there was a very, very different outlook to Manchester City’s 2025-26 campaign.
A run of six consecutive Premier League wins had reeled Arsenal in at the top of the Premier League. The gap was down to two points and, after a tiny wobble in the autumn, during which time City had lost at Newcastle and then at home to Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League, they looked like they were going on what is known – rather ominously in the context of Pep Guardiola’s City – as “a run”.
It was no bother for this City team that they weren’t storming clear at the top of the league. They have chased down plenty of other teams at later dates than this, and will have had every confidence they could do it again. After their 83rd-minute winner at Nottingham Forest on 27 December, it felt very much like they were going to do it again to Arsenal.
But how quickly things can change. Three consecutive disappointing draws, at Sunderland and at home to Chelsea and Brighton, followed by last weekend’s abysmal showing in the Manchester derby defeat at Old Trafford, have left them seven points behind Arsenal with 16 games left to play. Given their form of late, it might be too big a mountain to climb in the Premier League.
On Tuesday, things got even worse, as City fell to a 3-1 defeat at Bodø/Glimt in the Champions League, leaving them needing other results to go their way on the final matchday of the league phase next week if they are to finish in the top eight positions. It might have been the youngest starting XI City had ever fielded in the Champions League, but even the players did not see that as an adequate excuse. They recognised the performance was so bad that they refunded the travelling fans their expenses.
More on the Champions League
In the space of a few weeks, City have gone from looking like they could take over in the title race to just as unlikely as Aston Villa to mount a serious challenge to Arsenal. In Europe, they are heading for the play-off round as things stand, and they aren’t giving potential opponents many reasons to fear them.
Avoiding the strain of two extra matches that would come with that Champions League play-off round would be useful to say the least. City are enduring a terrible injury crisis, particularly in defence, where 20-year-old Max Alleyne has become a regular despite only being recalled from a loan at Watford a few weeks ago.
He has formed an inexperienced centre-back partnership alongside 21-year-old Abdukodir Khusanov, who only returned from two months out with an ankle injury in December. With Rúben Dias, John Stones and Josko Gvardiol all out with significant injuries, City have been found wanting at centre-back. Alleyne and Khusanov has become their second-most-used centre-back partnership this season, and they have been unconvincing in this recent run.
Man City centre-back partnerships
It is difficult to feel too sorry for City given they are able to throw money at a situation like this by signing England defender Marc Guéhi from Crystal Palace, but if you’re looking for reasons for their current malaise, there’s no doubt that the very sudden, extreme injury crisis in defence has been significant.
Further forward, they are still suffering the effects of Rodri rupturing his ACL way back in September 2024. At the time, the Spaniard was as key to the team as any other player, and they had to manage without him for almost the whole of last season. It was no coincidence that it became City’s first trophyless campaign since 2016-17, Pep Guardiola’s first year at the club.
Rodri made his comeback in the penultimate match of 2024-25, and the expectation was that he would spend the summer gaining strength and fitness, and City would have their star midfielder back at his best in time for this season. To say that has not proved to be the case would be an understatement.
The midfielder, so reliable both in his performances and his availability before his injury, has sustained a series of hamstring and knee issues this term, and has struggled to regain any kind of consistency.
Once a player City could not do without, Rodri is no longer anything like as important. Pre-injury, they only ever lost when he was absent, but their record this season is worse with him than when he is missing. They have won 45.5% of the games he has started in all competitions (five wins from 11), compared to 74.1% of the games he has missed (20 wins from 27).
It’s obviously unfair to pin the blame for City’s slump on Rodri. Beyond the fact it’s hardly his fault he has struggled to get over such a serious injury, it’s worth noting he has started tough games this season, including Arsenal away and both Manchester derbies. Presumably, given he has had so many false starts when it comes to returning from injury, he has also had to play when half-fit this season. All that said, though, there’s no getting away from the fact he hasn’t been as good as he once was.
He returned from his longest layoff for the New Year’s Day draw with Sunderland, and his comeback has coincided with another of City’s most important players hitting his worst-ever run of form.
Erling Haaland drew another blank at Bodø/Glimt this week, meaning he has now gone eight consecutive appearances in all competitions without a non-penalty goal (he did score a spot-kick in the draw at Brighton), making this his longest run while playing for a team in the top five European leagues (across his spells at City and Dortmund). He even failed to score in his 45 minutes on the pitch in the 10-1 FA Cup win over Exeter.
City had come to rely on him too much. He has been responsible for 42.5% of his team’s non-penalty xG in Premier League games this season, which is by far the greatest proportion of any player in the division. Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins is his closest challenger with 31.2%.
The list of players City have looked to for goals is alarming. After Haaland, Phil Foden and Tijjani Reijnders, defenders Josko Gvardiol and Nico O’Reilly are their biggest and most consistent goal threats. That cannot be sustainable.
Proportion of Man City's xG 2025-26
The problem in the last few weeks, however, has been that Haaland hasn’t even been getting many chances, let alone finishing them. Over his last eight games he has averaged just 0.31 non-penalty xG per 90, and has had only one shot from inside the six-yard box. Over his first 27 games of the season before that, he averaged 0.94 non-penalty xG per 90.
Erling Haaland xg map all competitions pre-Christmas 2025-26
Erling Haaland xg map all competitions post-Christmas 2025-26
A bit of fatigue and a dip in form through the winter months is understandable, but his lack of goals isn’t all his fault, of course. Many of the players around him have been below par, too.
Foden has been off-colour since enjoying a purple patch through November and December, without a single goal or assist in his last nine appearances in all competitions. Aside from the Exeter game, Jérémy Doku has only one goal or assist in his last 11. Omar Marmoush has been away at the AFCON but had almost completely fallen out of favour before that; Reijnders is getting less game time than earlier in the season, and Savinho has been of little use at all. Antoine Semenyo might prove to be the solution to all of their problems, but he has only been at the club for a few weeks and that can’t be expected of him yet.
It’s impossible to know at this point in time whether there is something seriously wrong, something terminal. There’s a chance Guardiola has run out of steam as he approaches a decade at the club. There’s a chance Rodri never recovers his best form and Haaland doesn’t start scoring again. There’s a chance City’s best defenders returning doesn’t fix the defence.
However, everyone at the club will be hopeful it is as simple as key players all suffering dips in form or injuries simultaneously, making this very much a temporary problem.
They need to get a move on if they are to recover, though. On current form, their hopes for the season are getting slimmer with every game they play.
If they can overcome their issues quickly, City could be back to their best before long. And if they start to put one of their runs together, Arsenal will be looking over their shoulders for the all-too-familiar sight of the City juggernaut closing in.
Premier League Stats Opta
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