Pep Guardiola walked into his press conference after Manchester City’s 2-1 defeat at Brighton and was asked if he now faces his biggest challenge at the club.
“Yeah, like when we won 16 or 17 games in a row to win the Premier League right?” he replied.
The City boss was talking about four years ago, when City started the Premier League campaign with five wins from their opening 12 and – just like now – they were five points off the leaders at this early stage.
City went on to win 15 games in a row to take the title that year – but, right now, it is hard to see them repeating that feat.
Back then, City were still playing well. This Guardiola side has not been doing so for some time and Saturday’s defeat to Brighton laid bare all of their issues.
Even before this four-game losing streak, City were riding their luck. The four games before included a controversial John Stones goal to beat Wolves in the last minute, a slender one-goal win against Southampton and another tense victory against Fulham, where Adama Traore should have scored a hat-trick. It has been far from convincing.
Even Guardiola admitted it, after this latest loss to Brighton. “Against Fulham, we played so much worse than against Spurs and Sporting,” he said.
This is no blip; this is City’s performances regressing to the mean.
Why are they less convincing now? They seem to have holes from front to back – and at the back, Rodri’s absence looks likely to be the critical factor of the season.
Since his absence, City are so open on the counter-attack. In all competitions, they have conceded 26 shots from fast breaks this season – that is more than any Premier League side.
With the Spaniard out, City are simply unable to snuff out teams breaking them in the transitions, and therefore they have less dominance on a game. In the second half, Brighton missed six big chances before they eventually scored.
It was the same ahead of Viktor Gyokeres’ hat-trick for Sporting in midweek – the Swedish striker missed a big one-on-one before getting his treble. City have lost two leads this week and the mid-game warning signs were there.
Rodri’s load to stop fast breaks has been shared out in this City team to little effect. Mateo Kovacic has been unable to stop the flow and not even Kyle Walker’s pace can bail them out.
The right-back was constantly troubled by Kaoru Mitoma and Pervis Estupinan down his flank, it was no surprise that Brighton’s equaliser came from that side of the pitch.
The second goal? Rodri’s absence could be pointed out again. How easy was it for Carlos Baleba to find Joao Pedro with a pass through the middle of the pitch? Then for Pedro to find Matt O’Riley for the winner?
Such gaps and holes are fine when the top end of the pitch is firing. That is another deficiency City are showing.
Against Brighton, City took a 1-0 lead in the first half but the xG of 1.99 suggested it should have been two. While Erling Haaland ended up on the scoresheet, he missed five more chances, as his spectacular attacking numbers – just like his team – regress towards the mean.
Haaland, of course, cannot just do it on his own – there is another problem for City. After the Norwegian, the next top goalscorer for the Premier League champions is three. As a result of that lack of firepower there was just 0.25 worth of xG in the second period against Brighton. Just 0.07 of it was on target.
A lot of these issues for City seem to originate from injuries. Guardiola was missing Ruben Dias and Stones at Brighton, while Nathan Ake and Manuel Akanji ended up being bench fillers as they were not fit enough to play, leaving Jahmai Simpson-Pusey to play at the back. Further forward, Jeremy Doku and Jack Grealish are also out injured.
“We could not keep the consistency of our game for 90 minutes,” said Guardiola. “We could not be more aggressive in these areas. But I’m pretty sure when the players come back, we can make some individual qualities of the team and we will be back.”
But few will get the violins out for one of the most financially-backed teams in the world.
Other teams will also point to similar injuries. Liverpool have been missing Alisson Becker and Diogo Jota for long periods of this season. Arsenal have been without Martin Odegaard for six weeks, plus niggling injuries to half their squad, especially in defence.
Guardiola even rightly pointed out in his press conference after Brighton that this is an issue across Europe, with Real Madrid seeing three players limp off. Everybody has to deal with it and get on with it, perhaps this season is all about the teams who deal with these setbacks the best.
For all of City’s problems, they still have Haaland, Ederson, Walker and last season’s Premier League Player of the Year Phil Foden – yet to score in the Premier League this season. They should be doing better.
City have been behind in the title race before. And Guardiola is a manager who knows how to reverse these gaps. “This is my challenge, our challenge,” he said. “I want to face it. I won’t step back, more than ever I want to do it.”
But never have Guardiola’s City had to fight back without their best player, with Rodri out. Never have they looked so unstable at both ends of the pitch. And never have they done it having lost four matches in a row.
Watch Man City’s next Premier League game with Tottenham live on Sky Sports on November 23, kick-off 5.30pm