You get turfed out of the Carabao Cup by the burly Australian bouncer. You take a weekend trip to the seaside but end up dropping your scoop of cherry ice cream on the Bournemouth promenade. And then the guy who you just found out is moving in next door, who is 14 years younger than you and looks like a handsome model from a shampoo advert, turns up in his purring 3-4-3 Series and makes your luxury sedan look decidedly old hat.
To say that Pep Guardiola has had better weeks would be an understatement. In fact, this is only the third time in his rarefied managerial career that he has, within a single season, lost three consecutive matches, and the past two occasions, during his time at Bayern Munich and Manchester City, were deep into the second half of seasons which ended with a domestic title win. This time, that looks far from certain.
In fact, the absence of certainty feels pervasive. Right now, City are a club in a bit of a holding pattern, waiting for things to happen. Waiting for Jack Grealish and Kevin De Bruyne to recover their fitness, form and mojo. Waiting for Guardiola to decide whether he will sign a new contract extension or leave at the end of this season. Waiting for the outcome of the hearing into the 115 charges against City for allegedly breaching financial rules.
It would be fair to say that Guardiola will have had better weeks than the one which yielded a rare three defeats
KIERAN MCMANUS/SHUTTERSTOCK
And so when, shortly before 1.30pm, an announcement over the public address informed the journalists seated in the club’s media auditorium that Guardiola would be half an hour later than scheduled for his press conference yesterday, it didn’t feel out of keeping.
What exactly could be keeping him, we wondered. Putting pen to paper on that new contract? Furiously cogitating on a formation change in his tactics laboratory? Clinking caipirinhas with the blazers from the Brazilian Football Association, who are rumoured to be determined to make him their next head coach?
In the end, there was no answer to that particular mystery. But when Guardiola eventually entered the auditorium, something in his mood felt off. Many times during his near-decade in England, he has bounced into press conferences with the manically energetic fervour of a man who has had a religious epiphany and five triple espressos that morning and can’t wait to tell you about it.
Here, Guardiola was both clipped and becalmed, exuding a little edginess in response to some familiar yet undispelled questions, but also an underlying air of apathy and weariness. He spoke at times in a hush which was somewhere between a whisper and a sigh. Two out of the first four questions put to him — about whether he had any plans to visit City’s owners in Abu Dhabi during the international break and whether Grealish would be fit to face Brighton & Hove Albion today — he answered with a one-word “no”.
Being bounced out of the Carabao Cup by Spurs will have hurt Guardiola
ACTION IMAGES VIA REUTERS/MATTHEW CHILDS
Given a chance to expound on his favourite subject, the merits of the manager of the team he’s about to face, a theme which can often propel him to heights of generous verbosity, he was typically gracious and complimentary about Fabian Hürzeler, saying he had been “really impressed” by his “incredible job”, but even that answer was delivered in a flat monotone, lacking its usual mischievous zest.
On the health of his team, figuratively speaking that is, Guardiola was somewhere between fatalistic and bullish. Could he, for the first time in his career, lose a fourth game in a row? “There’s always a first time in life, hopefully it’s not the case,” he said. But, “for 20 minutes against Fulham we were not good, the game against Bournemouth we were not good, the rest [of the games we lost] we were good.”
Pep would not have enjoyed Rúben Amorim, the next Manchester United head coach, putting one over him in the Champions League on Tuesday
ACTION IMAGES VIA REUTERS/ANDREW BOYERS
The really interesting stuff was about Grealish, who has not been in the squad for City’s past five games yet has just been selected for England by Lee Carsley, and who a few days ago posted a cryptic message on Instagram saying: “You never know what people are going through.” Guardiola disclosed that Grealish wanted to go to the England camp, and did a good show of pretending that his selection was entirely Carsley’s prerogative — and that, no, of course he wasn’t the slightest bit miffed that the interim England head coach hadn’t even picked up the phone to him.
One couldn’t help feeling, though, that the deeper truth of his feelings on the matter was thinly concealed by what he said about Grealish’s fitness in one of the few moments of elaboration. “In 17 days he didn’t train once,” Guardiola said. “Today was the first training [session]and he trained 20 minutes.”
Pep’s three-match losing runs
2014/15 Bayern Munich lost to Bayer Leverkusen 2-0 (Bundesliga, Away), Barcelona 3-0 (UCL, A) & FC Augsburg 0-1 (Bundesliga, H) — but still won the Bundesliga
2017/18 City lost to Liverpool 3-0 (UCL, A), Manchester United 2-3 (PL, H) & Liverpool 1-2 (UCL, H) – but still won PL title
2020/21-21/22 City lost to Chelsea 1-0 (UCL final, N), Leicester City 1-0 (Community Shield, N) & Spurs 1-0 (PL, A) — but still won PL title
2024/25 City have lost to Spurs 2-1 (Carabao, A), Bournemouth 2-1 (PL, A) & Sporting 4-1 (UCL, A) — Pep has never in his management career lost four games in a row
One was left wondering if there is something disjunct in the relationship between Grealish and Guardiola, which was always a pairing of two wildly different outlooks and lifestyles but which seemed previously to have found a common wavelength. And if that is so, it feels significant. One of the things that Guardiola has been extremely good at is managing the morale of his squad, especially those who aren’t playing every week or hitting their highest highs but whose sense of happiness and purpose is still important to the collective.
He almost never allows things to stale or curdle. Maybe Grealish will get fit, get back in the team and he and Guardiola will end the season bro-hugging on a trophy dais, but right now it doesn’t feel like it, and the feeling around his squad is something that Guardiola has hitherto had an incredible knack for controlling.
The larger question, of course, is whether this funk is part of the end days of the Guardiola era, or just a blip in the ninth year of a reign which will stretch to ten. And on that point, the manager was not giving even the slightest clue. It has been noted that the announcement of his past two contract extensions has arrived in November. But pressed, all he would say was: “I’m not going to talk about it, when it’s going to happen it’s going to happen.” No white smoke then, and while they have sailed through the mists of circumstance before, it feels like City and their manager are now shrouded in a grey fog of uncertainty.
