PEP Guardiola’s record-breaking, fantastical and innovative Manchester City were never going to gradually fade away. It doesn’t work like that. Extremes lead to extremes.
The Beatles didn’t knock out a couple of average albums then call it quits. A few short months after releasing The Long And Winding Road there were high court suits and solo material airing their grievances. Tiger Woods didn’t plod along, winning the odd major here and there when his peerless perfection deserted him. He crashed into a fire hydrant while missed fairways became par for the course.
It is the inevitable fate of those who master the highest high-wire. They do not land on a safety net to applause. They plummet to gasps.
#ManCity could today equal their longest winless away run under Pep Guardiola of 4⃣ games, set in October 2016.
Need to bounce back!#BURMCI @premierleague pic.twitter.com/Pt4jjttu5x
— GIDIONIBLOG.com.ng (@gidioniblog) December 3, 2019
That is not to suggest that this City creation will plummet literally, beyond the top four. They are far too well-assembled and capable of brilliance to do that. Yet, where once they bamboozled even the very best opponents and made them tremulous and small, now they are solved.
Their latest unravelling made it just two wins in seven and came against a team they’d usually lay down and die rather than give an inch to but here they ceded vast swathes of the pitch exposing a vulnerable defence. Elsewhere there were cameos of excellence but these were forced and the swaggering, instinctive manner in which this excellence used to be paraded now feels like a distant memory. Overall the performance – in a derby no less – amounted to the death-rattle of a formerly formidable beast.
The reasons for this are multifarious as you would expect because great men and great teams and great achievements are not undone simply by a common cold. There has been consistent wastefulness in front of goal. Bernardo Silva’s form; that so recently had him pinned as the best in the world of his type, has fallen off a cliff. There has been the loss of Sane, and the loss of Kompany, and the seismic loss of Laporte. Fernandinho’s acclimatisation to centre-back has taken a toll as too has Rodri’s acclimatisation to English football. David Silva’s legs are wearied while De Bruyne’s toiling wizardry is now too much relied upon. The left-back situation continues and who is to say that it will ever be resolved?
Title-Clinching interception from Vincent Kompany. pic.twitter.com/D3US4kuhZk
— erdem lolz (@erdemfelan) April 28, 2019
A propensity to float harmless balls into the area where a 5 ft 9 striker is easily crowded out by towering defenders has exasperated while out of possession a lack of intensity in the press has resulted in City being susceptible to even a bog-standard counter. The trademarked lightning-quick one-twos and overloads in wide areas have all but disappeared.
Over-riding all of the above, however; in fact, influencing every failing bar the injuries has been the unavoidable drop-off in motivation to meet Guardiola’s exacting demands for constant, ground-breaking artistry. “I expected that [City’s levels would dip] at the beginning of the season, after back-to-back titles,” Guardiola said this week.
Lastly, there has been the introduction of VAR which has predictably not been an ally and kicked City repeatedly when they’re down.
All of which leads us to a momentous question, one that was not expected to be asked anytime soon: is this the end for Pep Guardiola’s magnificent Manchester City?
It is, and as much as Blues would like to dig in deep and insist it’s a blip, or that injuries and VAR are entirely to blame the reality is that we are halfway between the beginning and middle of the end and attention must now be turned to rebuilding a team and reimagining an idea.
Phil Foden plays with velcro on his boots pic.twitter.com/gMaZVzTy6r
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) October 17, 2019
To begin this process the immensely promising Phil Foden and Eric Garcia must be drafted in because if not now, with a title race over and another due to start next August then when? Let them invigorate, both symbolically and literally. Afford them the opportunities to make their mistakes and learn from them in this rare, unwanted breathing space that City now have in the league.
In January meanwhile, a signing must be sought. Guardiola can deny any intentions to partake in the next window until he’s blue in the face but surely he recognises the importance and need for the impetus that a new face would bring. A player viewing it all with fresh eyes, with an energy and hunger that will remind his team-mates of who they used to be. There is enormous value in that.
Precisely who that player will be remains to be seen. Kalidou Koulibaly? Erling Braut Haaland? Each could conceivably be shifted mid-season but for a colossal fee yet that matters not anymore; just like the evident fact that whoever comes in will require several months of sticking out like a sore thumb until he’s absorbed his manager’s intricate methods the club’s recent self-defeating pride in sensible accountancy must now take a back-seat to the principal consideration, that being needs must.
From there, it is hoped that City improve. That’s the bar at present. To improve.
It will be anything but an easy rebuild and it will certainly not be achieved overnight. In fact, there are legitimate doubts as to whether its chief architect has the capacity to do it all over again because whereas traditionally deadwood is jettisoned here there are none and whereas usually, a clutch of new signings is an elixir here they must be immersed into a system and philosophy that can confound.
Indeed, such has been the immeasurable standards set by this extraordinary side and incomparable coach it is no rebuild at all, but rather the redecorating of the Sistine Chapel and that leads us to another momentous query: will it ultimately be a second masterpiece? Or will City continue to plummet to a nation’s gasp?
