Right now, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has the look of Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus when Rome fell in A.D. 476. He knows his masterpiece is falling, and he is powerless to stop it from crumbling.
Last weekend, Manchester City conceded two late goals in the Manchester derby, or rivalry match, to lose to bitter rivals Manchester United 2-1. City fans inside their Etihad Stadium home sat in near silence. Nobody was angry. They’ve witnessed greatness for almost a decade under Guardiola, but this silence was somber. Absolutely nobody saw this run of just one win in the last 10 games in all competitions coming.
Manchester City has won six of the last seven English Premier League titles and eight of the last 13. It’s a dynasty.
A few months ago it became the only team in English soccer history to win four straight top flight titles. It won the treble (the Premier League, European Champions League and FA Cup trophies) the season before that, becoming just the second team in English history to do so. Everything was going historically well. What could possibly go wrong?
Fast-forward a few months, and City is broken. Badly. It has lost five of its last seven Premier League games. It lost just 11 Premier League games in total over the previous three seasons combined.
This feels like the beginning of the end of Guardiola’s incredible reign as City’s marauding, all-conquering emperor in the most competitive league on the planet.
Can Manchester City snap out of this?
Usually we’d say yes. Given the quality of players it has, the depth of its squad and the manager, after a slow start to a season City usually improves in the second half and kicks on to win trophies.
But this feels different. The current signs aren’t good.
City playmaker Bernardo Silva scolded his teammates for their decision-making late on in the shocking collapse against Manchester United last weekend.
“At this level, if it’s a game or two, you can say it’s lucky or unlucky, but if it’s 10 games, it is not about that,” Silva said. “It’s a lot of games lately. … We have to look at ourselves. It’s the decisions that you make. Today, the last minutes, we played like under 15s, and we paid the price.”
And that is the crux of this problem. Guardiola’s “total football” philosophy relies on taking risks in possession, piling players forward to have a numerical advantage in the final third and keeping the ball and making good decisions. But what happens when you don’t and you lose the ball?
City always had Rodri, a defensive midfielder just voted the best player on the planet, to plug the gaps, cover cracks, win the ball back and be the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card.
But Rodri went down with a season-ending knee injury in September against Arsenal. That’s when this all started. Rodri’s importance to City was clear, but nobody realized just how much of an impact his injury would have, simply because he has pretty much been ever-present since he arrived from Atletico Madrid in 2019.
City has tried everything to replace Rodri over the last few months, but Guardiola, usually a genius in solving problems with creative solutions, has run out of ideas.
City’s only hope is to sign a sensationally talented defensive midfielder in the January transfer window to plug the Rodri gap. But that would really only paper over the cracks of an aging, injury-hit squad that has so many stars limping over the hill at the same time.
Has a quick collapse like this happened before?
We’ve seen this happen before in European soccer.
Manchester United’s legendary side under Sir Alex Ferguson aged overnight and descended into chaos, and United haven’t won a league title since he left in 2013. Barcelona’s dream team was kept around too long and was left to crumble together as Lionel Messi kept waving his wand to make it seem like an illusion, until it fell apart. Chelsea’s star core eroded quickly in 2011 aside from its sensational last hurrah in winning the Champions League in 2012. Real Madrid’s famed Galacticos wilted in 2008 just as Barcelona’s young stars emerged.
The only saving grace for City is that there is no clear pretender to take its place as the top dog in English soccer. Yet.
Liverpool is early in its new project under new manager Arne Slot. Arsenal appears to have taken a step back this season. Chelsea’s talented young squad is a few years from realizing its potential. Manchester United is in a massive rebuild, again.
Amid all of its struggles this season, City is still within touching distance of the title, and a win this weekend against Aston Villa and a loss for Liverpool at Tottenham would put it just six points off the top.
But from defending better to finding a Rodri replacement to keeping star players fit, it has to knit it all back together at the same time. Now. There can be no more “under 15s” decision-making. This topsy-turvy Premier League season has given City a chance to salvage its season.
Over the festive period, City can put itself back in the title race with a favorable schedule before it faces Chelsea and Arsenal in early 2025. If it can navigate the next month without a hiccup, and it still can, there’s a chance City can get itself back in the title hunt. A small chance.
What if Guardiola leaves and chaos ensues?
There is, of course, the possibility that Guardiola, who only just signed a new contract that runs until the summer of 2027, could walk away this season.
He isn’t under pressure from the Abu Dhabi-based owners. Guardiola was the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle when he arrived in 2016. He turned City’s expensively assembled machine into a winning juggernaut while playing soccer in its most beautiful form. Even if City finishes outside the Premier League’s top six this season, it will back Guardiola to rebuild the team and go again. If that is what he wants.
But there is a lot going on at City right now.
It has been charged with 115 breaches of Premier League rules, and that hearing has been going on over the last few months, all while City has been crumbling on the pitch. It’s expected that a verdict will arrive soon.
Guardiola has said multiple times he will stay if City is handed a hefty punishment or even relegated from the Premier League to the lower leagues of English soccer.
But nobody ever factored in that City would be struggling to win a game and look such a mess and that Guardiola might not be good enough for the job. Not our words. His.
“I’m not good enough,” Guardiola said after the defeat against Manchester United. “I am the boss, the manager, I have to find solutions, and so far I haven’t.”
“So far” is the key phrase there, though. It suggests Guardiola, one of the greatest and most successful managers in the history of the game, still believes he can turn this around.
But if this keeps on getting worse, Guardiola may decide to leave before his reputation is tarnished.
City will then be in chaos, with no clear successor lined up and a squad of very talented players all recruited to play in a very specific Guardiola way. Plus, it could be looking for a new manager and rebuilding an aging squad all while uncertainty continues about its future because of those alleged breaches of Premier League rules.
Amid this horrendous run of form for one of the greatest teams soccer has ever seen, there is a very real fear among Manchester City fans that things are about to get a lot worse. When a team starts to crumble like this, it happens very suddenly, and there isn’t a quick fix.
City’s fan base has a notoriously downbeat outlook on the team, and that remains despite all the winning in recent years. But if Guardiola leaves and City’s season descends into chaos on and off the pitch, the gallows humor its fans are famous for will intensify. And it might not mask the pain of what is about to come.
The next few weeks are crucial on and off the pitch in determining how Guardiola’s reign will come to an end. Whatever happens this season, he and City can say quite confidently “veni, vidi, vici” when all is said and done.
For now, one of soccer’s great dynasties is limping on.
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