Are Manchester City in crisis after three consecutive defeats?

3 weeks ago

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Are Manchester City in crisis after three consecutive defeats?

After Manchester City’s 4-1 defeat to Sporting Lisbon on Tuesday evening, Bernardo Silva said his side were “in a dark place”, although Pep Guardiola disagreed.

The City boss pointed out that his side had played very well for the most part, as they did last week as they exited the Carabao Cup at Tottenham. However, Guardiola is not blind to City’s problems. She admits they were not good enough in the defeat to Bournemouth last weekend and struggled to control Sporting’s counter-attacks.

Guardiola has been largely pleased with his side’s efforts in recent matches. While some saw narrow wins against Fulham, Wolves and Southampton as fortunate, the City manager was happy with their struggles and their desire to get the job done.

But we can’t ignore the fact that City have lost three times in the past week. Add to that the manner of Tuesday’s defeat, plus Bernardo’s comment, and there is a whiff of crisis surrounding the club at the moment. So here’s an investigation into what exactly went wrong.

(Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)

The injuries

The obvious place to start is with injuries.

Ballon D’Or winner Rodri is the biggest and most obvious defeat, compounded by the fact that fellow midfielder Kevin De Bruyne was missing for almost two months. Several other players have retired recently, including Ruben Dias, Jack Grealish and Jeremy Doku. The biggest problems stem from that, although in the wake of the defeat at Sporting there have been complaints among supporters about the club’s recruitment – or lack thereof – over the past two years.

(Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)

Whatever the good and bad of City’s approach to the transfer market, they have been hit by a significant number of injuries at the same time and that has had a clear knock-on effect.

Combined with the fact that others, such as Ilkay Gundogan and Phil Foden (who are improving week on week), have not been playing at their top level, it is perhaps no surprise that some of the team’s recent performances, even when winning, have been a bit disappointing.

A soft center

Guardiola’s response when he spots a weakness in his team, not least if Rodri is unavailable, is to fill the midfield with ball players and instruct them to make as many passes as possible to gain control of the game and to build further from there. That was exactly what they did in Lisbon on Tuesday evening, and in Rico Lewis, Mateo Kovacic, Bernardo and Gundogan they have players who can keep the ball very well.

The problem is that those players are not particularly athletic when it comes to winning the ball back or even chasing it back, and this was evident against Sporting, leaving the defense – which missed Lewis as he was pushed forward from right back – became exposed.

That’s why Tuesday’s game was remarkable. City played well, but were also defeated. In another respect it was easy to explain: they played well with the ball, did not take their chances and were weak on the break. Fulham, Wolves and Bournemouth, as well as Spurs in the Carabao Cup, have been able to take advantage of transition opportunities.

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These problems are exacerbated when those charged with keeping the ball safe begin to give the ball away easily, which has also been happening for some time. Gundogan has yet to rediscover his best form since returning in the summer. Lewis is sometimes inaccurate and Kovacic – the team’s main support in Rodri’s absence – epitomizes City’s recent form in that he does many things well in games but can be beaten very easily and not recover, such as the second goal van Sporting made clear.

(Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)

This trend has some fans clamoring for a different approach, resulting in something of a vicious cycle. Guardiola’s solution to these problems is more passing, more control, and he has a good supporting argument: if City are vulnerable to fast breaks, why not try to limit them as much as possible?

Some will argue that if the fast breaks are not limited, then the team is not fighting fire with fire and trying to be a little more direct and play with more pace in the middle. That’s a debate for another day, but in short: when most teams are deep against City and don’t give them space to play, there isn’t really a place to break into.

The shorter and blunter answer is that we already know Guardiola simply won’t think about it.

Lack of goals

This is quite a statement about the Premier League’s second highest scorers (after Spurs), but it appears they are short of goals, something Guardiola acknowledged on Tuesday. “We have to do a lot to score,” he said.

The thing about the start of the season, when City were honestly looking really good without Rodri, was that Erling Haaland was breaking records left, right and centre, so very few people noticed that almost no one else was scoring or needing to score. .

John Stones has some important goals to his name, Josko Gvardiol is doing his bit from the back and Kovacic has made his contribution. All too often in games there is a lack of grip in the final third, which was the case on Tuesday night. And if there is the vulnerability in civil society that was mentioned in the previous paragraph, then that comes down to the kind of problems that we see.

Haaland has not scored in six of his last 10 games for City in all competitions (Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)

On the wings, City have players who are excellent at getting the ball to and into the penalty area, but who lack an end product within it. In fairness to Savinho, he could have had three excellent assists against Southampton, allowing others to squander the chances. The Brazilian has started his career well at City, but at the moment he is not a goalscoring threat – and neither is Doku.

Grealish is out of the picture again, but says he has never been a goalscorer, while Matheus Nunes has played well on the left flank lately, but rarely scores goals.

City have scored four times from corners in the Premier League this season, which is more than any other team, although they have also taken the most: 98. Their conversion rate from corners is the sixth highest in the league, which is respectable. but four goals from 98 corners fits with the idea that they have to do a lot to score, especially when rivals like Arsenal spend so much time and effort on set play.

It feels like City are in a bleak situation at the moment, but Bernardo’s comment is reminiscent of an equally worrying message from Gundogan 18 months ago. “I feel like something is missing, something is not right,” he said in January 2023. “Right now there is a special recipe missing: performance, desire and hunger are no longer like in the past years.” And that season ended quite well.

It would be far-fetched to suggest another treble is on the way, but that quote from Gündogan should help put things into perspective. The best way for City to do that is to get their house in order against Brighton on Saturday evening.

With Tottenham and Liverpool coming up after the international break in November, City will need to strengthen their defense and midfield and start taking some more chances when they arrive.

It’s rare for a mini-crisis to develop into a major problem at City, but this is a team who are more vulnerable than we’ve seen them in some time.