A team in crisis: What's behind Man City's recent struggles?

Pep Guardiola is discovering the meaning of “crisis” at Manchester City. It is a new sensation for the 53-year-old manager, who has transformed the fortunes of every club he has coached and influenced football like no other in the modern game. But cracks are beginning to appear in his empire at the Etihad.

Saturday’s 2-1 Premier League loss at Brighton saw Guardiola suffer a fourth-consecutive defeat for the first time in his senior managerial career — a run dating back to 2008 when he started at Barcelona. Brighton’s win also marked City’s first four-game losing streak since 2006, two years before the club were taken over by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan and his Abu Dhabi-backed billions.

Tottenham, Bournemouth, Sporting CP and Brighton have all beaten City in the space of 10 days, albeit in three different competitions — not quite the “four-in-a-row” that their fans have boasted about since winning a fourth-successive Premier League title last season.

It is always dangerous to write off a great champion and herald the start of their decline, but it comes to everyone, no matter the sport. The problem with an end of an era is that it is almost impossible to predict. The signs only become clear when you look back with hindsight and everything seems obvious. But if Guardiola was to take a glimpse over his shoulder at recent months, the signposts will be there.

“Today in the press conference I was asked if it was the end of the era,” Guardiola told reporters after the defeat at Brighton. “I know people want that. I smell it for many, many years. What we have done in these years, people have said it’s so difficult, but if somebody would like to beat us it is going to happen because in the next 50 years, we’re not going to win all the Premier Leagues. It’s impossible.”

In isolation, the pitfalls that have befallen City would not be enough to destabilise the team and raise questions over their ability to bounce back. But once you start to stack them up, the pressures and distractions of each one suddenly seem overwhelming.

The off-field battle against the Premier League’s 115 charges for breaching financial regulations — City vehemently deny all of them — has been a cloud over the club for months; one which has impacted on their ability to attract new players to the Etihad. Why? Because no top player would risk signing for a club facing potentially unprecedented financial penalties, a massive points deduction, or even expulsion from the Premier League.

The announcement in October that Txiki Begiristain will leave his post as director of football next summer after 13 years at the club was also a significant blow to Guardiola, who has worked in tandem with his close friend and former Barcelona teammate throughout his time as City manager. City announced that Begiristain will be replaced by Sporting CP’s Hugo Viana, but his exit has raised further questions over Guardiola’s future beyond the end of his contract which expires next June.

These issues are the slow, ominous drumbeat heard in the background, but events on the pitch are now turning up the volume to an uncomfortable level.

It is too simplistic to attribute all of City’s problems to the loss of defensive midfielder Rodri, after he suffered season-ending cruciate ligament injury against Arsenal in September. But the 28-year-old, who was recently crowned the 2024 Ballon d’Or winner, is a hugely important figure for City and the stats back that up.

Since the start of the 2023-24 season, and up to the Arsenal game, Rodri played in 53 games for City in all competitions and lost just one: the FA Cup final against Manchester United. When Rodri plays, their win percentage is 73.6%; without him, it drops to 58.3%.

However, City won six and drew one of the seven games that immediately followed Rodri’s injury, so they had found a way to play without the Spain international. But injuries to other key players like Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones, Manuel Akanji, Rúben Dias, Jack Grealish and Jérémy Doku have hit them hard through this season too.

City are arguably paying the price for offloading forward Julián Álvarez to Atletico Madrid in the summer without replacing him. Having only signed winger Savinho, from partner club Girona, and former midfield captain Ilkay Gündogan this summer, City failed to replenish their squad sufficiently, leaving them with a smaller number of first-team players than others in the Premier League.

Added to this is the fact that a number of key figures in Guardiola’s side are reaching the end of their careers: De Bruyne (33), Kyle Walker (34), Mateo Kovacic (30), Gündogan (34), Bernardo Silva (30), and Éderson (31) will all need to be replaced sooner rather than later.

One of the factors in Manchester United’s alarming decline following Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in 2013 — after 13 Premier League titles in 20 years — was the age of his squad and the club’s failure to plan ahead with replacements for Patrice Evra, Rio Ferdinand, Nemanja Vidic, Michael Carrick and Paul Scholes.

The United team selected by Ferguson for his final home game as manager had an average age of 27.54; the XI who started City’s defeat at Brighton this weekend had an average age of 25.72. Though figure is skewed by the presence of two 19-year-olds in Rico Lewis and Premier League debutant Jahmai Simpson-Pusey.

Man City and Guardiola are fighting fires on several fronts, on and off the pitch, and the impact is being shown in their recent results. But they have too much quality to be written off. They are only five points behind leaders Liverpool and are due to travel to Anfield on Dec. 1, so City can still rescue their season.

“When the players come back, I don’t have any doubt that we will be back to our best,” Guardiola said after the Brighton defeat. But for the first time since arriving at City, and maybe for the first time in his managerial career, Guardiola might be trying to convince himself and his players of that message as much as he is attempting to prove it to everybody else.