Man City vs Arsenal: How return of a familiar Pep Guardiola flaw threatens to derail champions’ season
City eased their way to Premier League success under Guardiola last season, but this week’s defeat to Newcastle highlighted how a ‘system jam’ could end their title defence
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Your support makes all the difference.In the midst of what was the longest dressing-room dressing-down that the Manchester City squad have yet received from Pep Guardiola, the increasingly animated – and incredibly loud – Catalan was most concerned with players “switching off” and letting their level down.
They just hadn’t been responding. All this could be detected in his own demeanour during the 2-1 defeat to Newcastle United on Tuesday. Having spent the first half frenetically instructing them in his usual manner, he looked passively dejected by the end, as if he had seen the 2-1 reverse coming and realised there was little more he could do.
He consequently said a lot after the game, over the course of a tense half-hour.
In any normal situation, you’d be afraid for Arsenal this Sunday, and how City might now respond.
Except this isn’t a normal situation, let alone a normal Guardiola season. Something is undeniably off, and he knows it. The numbers prove it.
For just the second time in his managerial career, but the second time at City, Guardiola has already lost four games by this point of a season.
That is the number that used to be seen as a key threshold for winning the title by everyone from Sir Alex Ferguson to Bill Shankly, and was cited in that famous televised exchange between Brian Clough and Don Revie about Leeds United.
“I wanted to win the league, but I wanted to win it better,” Clough explained as to why he took the job.
“That’s impossible,” Revie responded. “We’d only lost four matches.”
And this was of course long before the days when super-wealthy clubs like Ferguson’s Manchester United, Chelsea and City themselves made the threshold even higher; when points totals for titles became so high that any single slip feels like high drama.
This fourth defeat instead came in the space of just nine games.
If Guardiola so laudably bent the Premier League to his imposing will last season, making the vast majority of City matches so predictable for another record point haul, the Premier League has this term snapped back with a vengeance. City aren’t the guarantee they were only a few months ago, something that only energises Sunday’s match against Arsenal. It certainly energised that game against Newcastle, as City were subjected to a comeback that would have been almost unimaginable last season.
Some of this might be down to another recent norm of the Premier League: how nobody has retained the trophy since 2009. The majority of title defences have instead been damningly tepid, a trend which only reflects better on Ferguson’s remarkable ability to just keep his United going.
That may well be the exception. To put City's problems down to a recent Premier League norm still feels like it’s letting them off far too easily, especially given their financial advantage; given the platform last season’s 100 points represent; given how Guardiola teams generally hit their peak in the third season; and given the coach he is known to be.
The Catalan is supposed to be an exception himself. Guardiola’s career and reputation, as well as the every advantage City have, indicate he should be the first manager since Ferguson to retain the title. He still might be, of course, but there is definitely something to fix.
While part of the problem is that Liverpool aren’t that far off City’s relentless 2017-18 number, the champions have themselves significantly dropped off.
Results say as much, but so do some internal stats, as well as the obvious signs from performances. City just aren’t dominating games in the way they used to, and are less ruthless with the fewer chances they have been creating.
They have slacked off, as Guardiola scolded them for in the St James' Park dressing room.
But then this was even intimated in the manager's public comments, and after another win, too.
Against Huddersfield: “We forgot to attack the box.”
Against Newcastle United: “We forgot to play.”
It mightn’t so much be forgetting, though, as remembering too easily.
It feels as if some of this is about execution, as if City are to a certain extent on auto-pilot. They have actually still been playing the same moves and approaches that utterly disorientate teams when at their peak, but so much slower and without the same edge. Like it's just muscle memory, rather than making it happen.
Hence another game, against Newcastle, when they were unable to get in behind the defensive midfielders. City’s passing and movement is usually so fast and accurate that opposition players are just naturally pulled all over the place to free that space, but that was not the case here.
And while the coaching staff have largely put the December blip down to key players getting injured at the same time, that spell may just have exacerbated issues already there.
There has felt a latent complacency. Something an exasperated Guardiola has been aware of.
Tactical issues have arisen from the mental state of the team.
One factor in this week’s complacency may have been the partial misjudgement of playing such strong teams in the cups for such easy wins. That can happen. Another factor might be something wider, a drop-off more universal in sport, that tennis coach Calvin Betton tells the Independent he has recognised in his own field.
“That can happen psychologically,” Betton says. “It’s not necessarily a mental weakness, more that you’re winning easily so much you forget what it’s like to be not having it your own way - and get a system jam.
“It happened specifically with Andre Agassi. He made it to a US Open final in 1990 dropping just two sets, and then when Pete Sampras won the first set, Agassi went to pieces.”
A “system jam” is a description that seems to bring much of this together, and reflects one consistent flaw through all of Guardiola’s teams through his career. Their quality can occasionally work against them. They can sometimes be so good that they can't deal with things when they then suddenly and temporarily go wrong. The Catalan is so set on fixing it that he has had his staff be more watchful of players’ commercial commitments, to ensure any distractions are minimal.
Against such micro-management, there have also been grander ambitions.
Guardiola’s main objective this season is the Champions League. Everything is geared towards it. Running alongside that is the way his physical regime is geared towards that stage of the season, too, so the team comes to a peak after February. There is similarly the justified hope that Kevin De Bruyne returns to peak form by then after his long lay-off, especially as he is seen as the most tactically intelligent player and translator of Guardiola’s ideas on the pitch - as well as they key driving force. City have certainly missed his intensity.
All of this could well come together so all of the current problems are rendered irrelevant.
But they still actually need a response against Arsenal. That right now feels more unpredictable than ever before.
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