Around the 35th minute of Manchester City’s Premier League match against Liverpool at Anfield, they were awarded a free-kick about 35 yards from the goal. The deficit was still narrow, just the one goal. City, instead of attacking the box, played a short routine to Bernardo Silva, who dribbled to the right, then played a short pass, indulged in some more intricate passing, sent the ball back to the left wing—and eventually Liverpool tackled City out of possession.
Pep Guardiola had a night to remember. Some of his expressions will be framed in Premier League promos, others into memes. His expression after this free-kick routine was worth watching on loop. City hadn’t had a shot on the Liverpool goal thus far, and Guardiola could not believe what he was watching.
City did a lot of things you expect them to. They walked off at half-time with 46% possession, and ended the game having more possession than Liverpool. The second half was almost entirely played at their tempo. Once Jeremy Doku came on, they even threatened to seize the game. Off-the-ball, they ran hard and made their tackles.
What one can’t account for is the mistakes, the elementary slips that leave everyone scratching their heads, not least their coach.
For the first goal, they forgot to keep track of the back post. For the second, their centre-back took too much time on the ball, and lost it to Darwin Nunez in much the same way that Jarrad Branthwaite lost a ball to Amad Diallo down at Old Trafford. You can pin Branthwaite’s error to his youth or the pressure of a loud Old Trafford crowd; how do you explain someone with the experience, composure, and steel of Ruben Dias not clearing his lines? Or Kyle Walker repeatedly losing Virgil van Dijk during set-pieces? Or Manuel Akanji gifting Mohamed Salah a 1v1 run at the goalkeeper, offering a tiger a clear path to its prey?
This Manchester City team, once as precise as a Swiss timepiece, now scatters these errors like confetti at a carnival. The nature of the mistakes at Anfield are the same as they were against Feyenoord, which were similar to what one saw against Tottenham.
Around the 80th minute, the Anfield crowd bellowed “sacked in the morning” at Pep Guardiola, to which the Spanish manager responded by showing the number of Premier League titles he has won.
Tempting as it is to pull up Guardiola for City’s display—and repeated errors should land at the manager’s doorstep—it is hard to label these mistakes as coaching issues. These are the same players who were mesmeric, almost breathtaking, until four months back, or even last season, when they went on a staggering winning streak to secure the 2023-24 title. If anything, after spending so much time on them, not making basic mistakes is the least Guardiola will expect from them.
Gary Neville’s post-match podcast struck a chord of truth—these players resemble marathon runners hitting the wall, their tenacity dimming like a sunset, minds weary from the endless race. All of which is completely normal, and happens to the best of teams.
It also seems like the only plausible explanation. Good players don’t become bad overnight, and the more you watch them, you realise that their losses can’t be pinned on a team throwing in the towel. Far from it. This team works hard, but seems to have reached an ideological dead end. Unfortunately for them, it has coincided with a physical dip of an ageing team.
Whether it is a crisis or not depends on the stomach for a fall within the Etihad walls, but there is no doubt that change is imperative now. And Rodri, for all his brilliance, isn’t the lightning rod they need.
This City team, this club, stands like a cathedral built to Guardiola’s specifications, every brick laid to support his footballing sermon. In good times and bad, Guardiola’s tenets are clearly visible in how this team play. Even with the scorecard reading 2-0 and time slipping away, City refused to abandon their principles. Their players moved in neat shapes and created passing lanes through which they could intricately build a move up. They just kept running into a wall and eventually lost time.
Whisper it slowly, but it may be time for Pep Guardiola to figure out a new route to the goal, one that attacks as much as it builds, one that balances surgical precision with some agricultural bludgeoning. Beauty can take many shapes and forms, and City’s on-pitch liberation might just lie in the road they don’t fancy much.
