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Manchester City are in meltdown - does Pep Guardiola have any answers?
It took a good few seconds for Pep Guardiola to respond.
He chewed it over, a slight smile playing on his lips, and nodded thoughtfully as if realising something new about Anfield, about this crowd, and, perhaps, about the depth of the crisis engulfing him.
Then he put up those six fingers, not in Jose Mourinho-style defiance as some have suggested but playfully, without bite.
That is to his to credit, and yet it was also the sign of a beaten man; of a manager no longer in the same fight as the Anfield fans.
It feels significant that Guardiola’s public persona through this seven-game winless run has been self-effacing to the point of defeatist.
"Maybe after seven years winning six Premier Leagues, maybe one year another team deserve it," was his half-joking post-mortem after the Brighton defeat.
Three weeks later he was similarly light-hearted when telling reporters "maybe I deserve to be sacked, honestly. Maybe I'm still in the job because we won six Premier League's."
There’s that mention of the six again, a new habit of Guardiola’s. More than the lack of fight or needle, it’s this harking to past achievements that should worry Man City fans.
Reaching for trophies gone is a tell-tale sign of a manager no longer able to look to the future and instead peering back towards nostalgia or self-preservation.
Guardiola’s mind drifting back rather than forward to the next challenge is the best indicator we have that the project is over, that both parties might soon come together and decide it isn’t too late to walk back on promises hastily made a fortnight ago.
🗣️ "I'm so proud of my six Premier Leagues against that team"
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) December 1, 2024
Pep Guardiola reacts after some Liverpool fans were heard chanting that he will be getting 'sacked in the morning' 🔹 pic.twitter.com/nMkFTx4b76
Certainly there were no answers, no visions for the future, in the manner of the defeat at Liverpool.
Where once Guardiola’s genius would come to the fore with creative solutions to mini-wobbles, on Sunday he went for the same lopsided 4-4-2 – complete with Bernardo Silva in midfield and Rico Lewis on the right wing – that was picked apart by Tottenham.
The definition of madness, as they say, albeit with a slight twist; dropping Ederson for Stefan Ortega, suggesting Guardiola felt it was personnel not tactics to blame.
He was proved wrong with cruel irony as Ortega conceded a penalty with an almost identical error to the one made by Ederson in midweek.
This is not a Rodri problem anymore. Nor is it a crisis that can be solved simply by moving around the component parts.
Man City are in meltdown, the cracks that have been appearing for 18 months (but papered over by the psychological power of the City machine) finally bursting open.
The spell that kept opponents pinned back, awaiting defeat, is broken, the magician’s curtain pulled back.
The squad has been allowed to grow old together. Successive transfer windows have been poor, with talented players sold and bizarre, hubristic signings made.
In the last two years we’ve seen Matheus Nunes and Mateo Kovacic come in; Cole Palmer, Joao Cancelo and Julian Alvarez leave.
The title is gone, that’s for sure.
City would need to hit their Centurion season average (2.6 points per game) from this moment onwards just to hit 89 points, a tally Liverpool can get by winning 17, drawing four, and losing four.
The next one might be gone, too, or at least it will be without a major revamp in the summer.
Looking at his bruised and beaten face after the 3-3 draw with Feyenoord you can tell Guardiola sees the scale of the task at hand, and he deserves huge respect for committing to a new deal mid-slump; for deciding that he got them into this mess so he should be the one to get them out of it.
The way things are going the Man City board might be wondering if he’s right about that.
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