Psychological slumps and strange recruitment - how Manchester City ceased to be a Pep Guardiola team

This simply isn’t the Manchester City side we used to know. The old City, the team that won the treble and dominated the Premier League for years, would not have thrown away a 2-1 lead to lose at home to Real Madrid, nor struggled to scrape past lowly Leyton Orient in the FA Cup, and surely wouldn’t have fallen to a 5-1 thrashing away to Arsenal. This is a Manchester City side who have forgotten how to play like a Pep Guardiola team.

In a way, it’s a strangely sad sight to see a team lose their identity with no apparent plan to regain control. Against Arsenal, in particular, it was hard to detect even trace elements of the team they were just eight months prior. There was no control over possession or the pace of the game, and watching them fail to execute even simple passes across the back line without putting themselves under pressure was both inexplicable and oddly tragic, like seeing a fish that had forgotten how to swim.

How Manchester City lost their identity

Tuesday night’s critical Champions League play-off match against Real was not the kind of game during which Manchester City could afford to cave in – the two most recent continental champions facing off for a chance at a second crown in quick succession. But what we witnessed was a team who had once seemed to be wrought from the psychological equivalent of cast iron wilt when they needed to hold firm.

Why would Mateo Kovačić, with all his experience, play such an awkward ball back to Rico Lewis? How could Lewis himself, arguably City’s only consistently solid player during their record-breaking losing run last year, make such a hash of his own pass under pressure? What possessed Ederson to think he could beat Kylian Mbappé to the ball? Jude Bellingham’s winner emerged as the result of a string of what should have been straightforward plays collapsing in on themselves.

We’ve seen it time and again in recent months. When the going gets tough, City collapse. They were right in the game at the Emirates until Thomas Partey’s heavily-deflected strike put Arsenal 2-1 up, and then City’s collective shoulders instantly sagged. They were in good shape at 2-1 up against Real, but never looked confident once a rebound fell fortunately for Brahim Díaz to level. Every misfortune that has befallen City has brought more with it as City fall limp under the weight of their own disappointment and frustration.

This is still a team which wins more than it loses – just about – but every time the tide turns against them in a game, their will breaks. There is a sense of self-fulfilling defeatism about the team that feels utterly alien to every Guardiola side we’ve seen before, whether it’s in Manchester or Munich or Barcelona. Perhaps that mental change is more immediately problematic than the tactical about-turns that Guardiola has performed over the past two seasons.

Many tactical commentators point to the arrival of Erling Haaland as the point at which Guardiola changed his philosophical and strategic tack. Before the Norwegian arrived at the Etihad, City played an intricate passing game in which players positioned themselves relative to the ball and to their team-mates rather than to the points they notionally occupied on a traditional team-sheet, and the result was absolute control of the ball, game after game, as opposing sides exhausted themselves trying to win the ball from a team that knew precisely how to keep hold of it 90 straight minutes.

Haaland, a traditional, individualistic style of striker, forced a sea change to a more orthodox positional set-up, but it all still worked, there were still interesting wrinkles such as John Stones’ fluid role between defence and midfield in the second half of the 2022/23 season, and there was still the same sense of control which continued through last season as Haaland piled on the goals. Guardiola had found a way to compromise his own tactical principles with the addition of one of the best strikers in the world, and it was immensely successful.

On paper, not much should have changed this season. Perhaps Rodri, arguably the best player in the world over the past two years, was the glue holding it all together. Maybe Kevin de Bruyne, visibly lacking a sprinkling of his old stardust as age and injuries start to creep up on him, was the key until he no longer could be. But Guardiola built his reputation on teams who weren’t based around the talents of individuals but their capacity to work as a collective. If the decline or absence of one or two players could do this much damage, then he has lost touch with some of his core principles.

Then you look at gifted players like Jack Grealish, who seems entirely at sea, and Phil Foden, who took months to get going this season, and suspect that the issues run deeper. So many players have been below par on an individual basis that it’s impossible not to imagine that something has gone badly wrong in either the dressing room or on the training pitch.

Or perhaps City have simply started signing too many players who don’t mesh with the system. Adjusting a scheme to work around Haaland was one thing, but then you add a few more players like Savinho, who – with his flair and individualism and constant willingness to find a way through defences all by himself – is in many ways as far from a Guardiola player as could be imagined. Savinho is not dissimilar to the player Grealish was before Guardiola moulded him to his specifications, but either Guardiola doesn’t want to shape the summer signing the same way, or he has lost touch with the style of play that earned him so much success in the first place.

Something has to give - else Guardiola may have to go

One way or the other, City have become untethered from the methodology which has earned Guardiola trophy after trophy over the past 17 years. Whether it’s due to the manager or the recruitment, the injuries or the weight of worries over their legal case against the Premier League or simply an old-fashioned squad-wide psychological collapse, City no longer have the structure, control and self-assuredness of every Guardiola team that has come before them.

How long can this persist until something snaps? For most teams, sacking the manager is the first instinct when the mood amongst the players turns for the worst and perhaps a fresh approach would bring improvements – but then again, Guardiola has only just signed a new contract and is the most sacred of cows. If any manager has earned the right to try and patch up the hull of a sinking ship, it’s the Spaniard.

Perhaps it’s best just to write this season off to a certain extent and to set the base line at simply making the top four (or five, with the Premier League likely to get an extra Champions League berth this season) and come back next year with a new approach and a clean slate. There are plenty of youngsters in the squad who could benefit from the pressure being lifted a little and being given time to bed themselves in more. Partly because his approach at Barcelona and Bayern was one of self-enforced short-termism, Guardiola has never really been responsible for fostering a new generation before and maybe that, too, is another part of the reason that everything feels so far askew right now.

Likely the single best thing Guardiola can do, however, is just to go back to his own personal back to basics. Step back in time a few years and get those players back in their triangles around the ball, protecting it at all costs and dragging the opposition around the pitch as they chase shadows trying to press. Redouble those rondos, and become a Guardiola team once again. Right now, City have one of the best managers in the game’s history, in charge of one of the most expensive squads ever assembled, and nothing is lining up properly. Something, somewhere needs to give.