No empire lasts forever. Pep Guardiola’s struggle against entropy will be fascinating
Ffive defeats in a row. Three defeats in a row in the Premier League. A 52-match unbeaten home record was shattered. An eight-point lead over the leaders. Pep Guardiola’s biggest home defeat – and against Tottenham, whose previous match was a home defeat to Ipswich. For empires, the end comes gradually at first and then all at once, while Guardiola is brilliant enough Manchester city are rich enough that no one should write them off anymore, there is a sense that the parameters have shifted, that this is not the league we thought we knew. Jurgen Klopp is probably wondering if he went a year too early.
This being City, the tendency is to find explanations, to imagine a return to the status quo. It is true that they tend to stutter in late autumn. It is even true that Guardiola’s record against Tottenham is impossibly poor; In his managerial career he has lost nine times to Spurs, more than to any other club. It is true that, amid a series of injuries and general fatigue, they will be without both Ballon d’Or winner Rodri and their replacement, Mateo Kovacic. And it is also true that they could easily have won each of the last five games: even on Saturday, although they lost the xG 2.5-2.1, they had 23 shots to Tottenham’s nine and could have won quite comfortably through shots from Erling Haaland alone.
And yet there is something different. According to Opta, City have had the third-easiest run of games of any club since the start of this Premier League season, but if they lose at Anfield next week (and Liverpool are the side Guardiola has lost the most times to the second place) will be 11 points behind the leaders. The aura is gone; opponents sense blood in the water. This is like Chelsea in 2015/2016, or Manchester United under David Moyes, or Liverpool in the early 1990s. Parties are no longer confronted with them simply to avoid embarrassment; they believe there is a chance for a remarkable outcome.
That changes the mentality. On Saturday, Tottenham knew, just as Brighton had known two weeks earlier, that there were chances if they could withstand the early onslaught. City are still more than capable of exceptional football, but there is now a vulnerability to it.
Guardiola’s teams have always been sensitive to balls played in behind them. When you play with such a high limit, it’s almost inevitable that if something goes wrong, it will. All four Spurs goals came in transition: three counters from inside their own half and a misplaced pass from Josko Gvardiol. But the question is why the issue is suddenly so salient. Rodri’s absence is part of that. He protects the space in front of the defensive line better than almost anyone in the history of the game; it would be almost impossible not to miss him, especially with Kovacic likely to be out for another three to four weeks.
But other players are out of form or out of sorts. There is a pervasive feeling of fatigue. At 34 years old, Kyle Walker’s pace seems to have suddenly deserted him. Ilkay Gündogan, Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva look old. Phil Foden and John Stones have not been right since their return from the European Championship. Haaland misses chances (but is still the league’s top scorer). As Guardiola hinted on Saturday, the hunger may have disappeared. And football, as Arrigo Sacchi said, is multiplicative: a player who plays well improves those around him; a player who plays poorly drags them down. Problems cause problems.
City remains second in the table. In that respect, this is nothing like José Mourinho’s last months at Chelsea. It was also unlikely that Guardiola would ever be sacked. However, the fact that he has signed a new contract is intriguing. Apart from everything else, there is a fascination for the neutral person to see how he tries to put this right. If he thinks the selection needs innovation, then the budget is there. Although with the Premier League case against City still ongoing, prospective signings may be cautious about committing to a club that could face a range of sanctions, from transfer bans to relegation.
But there is also a – as yet weak – possibility that it is not just about this season. No hegemony lasts forever. The treble season, the introduction of Haaland and the slight loss of control that it entailed, may eventually come to resemble Ajax under Stefan Kovacs in 1972-73 or Liverpool under Kenny Dalglish in 1987-88, a time of glory that marked the beginning was. of the end, as if once the restrictions were lifted and the flower could fully blossom, the only future was decay.
The game is no longer the same, the financial structures are very different. The richest can change stories. This could just be a blip. The intrigue lies in discovering it, in watching Guardiola, one of the all-time greats, struggle with the entropic imperative.
On this day
English football considered itself supreme. But on November 25, 1953, the Hungary of Ferenc Puskás, József Bozsik and Sándor Kocsis came to the Empire Stadium, as Wembley was still known, and played what their manager Gusztáv Sebes described as ‘socialist football’ and won 6-3. first home defeat England had ever suffered against continental European opposition. Previous setbacks could be written off as a result of the heat, the pitch or the questionable foreign cuisine; this was an indignity on the Cumberland field on a foggy November afternoon, the very conditions in which football was meant to be played. And 6-3 flattered England; they were played out from beginning to end. ‘Twilight of the Gods’ was the headline in both the Mirror and the Telegraph the next day.
England could not cope with the movement of the Hungarian attackers around the deep-lying centre-forward Nándor Hidegkuti. The following May they still had not worked out a plan and lost 7-1 in Budapest. But the introspection of those matches sparked the revolution led by Alf Ramsey, right back in the Wembley match, and the 1966 World Cup victory. Hungary, meanwhile, lost in the 1954 World Cup final, their only defeat in 51 games, and collapsed. after the 1956 uprising.
This is an excerpt from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, the Guardian US’s weekly look at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Do you have a question for Jonathan? Email footballwithjw@theguardian.com and he will provide the best answer in a future edition