Missing in action during the past six weeks: Manchester City’s pizzazz. It was absent here again, in the latest moping performance that has become the odd, yet recognisable face of Pep Guardiola’s formerly supreme team. Next stop in Europe will be a pivotal trip to Paris in January, with PSG also fighting for a playoff spot.
There is now a surreal element about City’s plunge. Sides go on losing runs – sure they do – but for this champion group to lose for a seventh time in 10 games and extend their disturbing run to a meagre single victory in that time is baffling.
It is befuddling Guardiola, who acknowledged his men should have won more times than they have since first going down at Tottenham in the Carabao Cup on 30 October. The manager’s statement came before this latest reverse, perhaps aired as a gee-up.
It did not work and instead Juventus sealed a precious win thanks to Dusan Vlahovic’s 53rd-minute header and a second goal that came on the break when Timothy Weah flipped the ball in from the right and Weston McKennie thundered a volley home.
Each were substitutes thrown on by Thiago Motta. His opposite number, 75 minutes in, had deployed none: one more sign of the torpor engulfing Guardiola and his charges.
At kick-off, City were 20th, and Juve 22nd, each with eight points, four away from the last automatic qualification berth. It cast this as a clash of two continental giants who needed victory, and the boost it would provide on their return to domestic duties. In the past weeks, Guardiola has exuded isolation, a loneliness that comes from serial losses. For the first time in nine years piloting City, he has pointed to injuries in mitigation, though here he named a strong XI.
It featured Ilkay Gündogan’s craft as the holding midfielder, and Kevin De Bruyne and Jack Grealish as twin playmakers. It had, too, Rico Lewis at left-back and his defensive fragility was exposed more than once, as when Francisco Conceição outmuscled him and Juve earned a corner.
Too many mistakes is one Guardiola diagnosis of his side’s ills. The Catalan demanded his charges play “simple”, then saw Lewis and Josko Gvardiol thump passes that missed the easy target of Grealish near the Italian area.
Gündogan and Kyle Walker did the same: each found Nicolo Savona rather than Jérémy Doku on the left. The second instance of this sloppiness caused Guardiola to shake his head. When De Bruyne did locate his man, Erling Haaland’s clumsy touch had the ball ricocheting off his toes.
City prosper when they pounce, tiger-like, and they remembered this for a fleeting moment. Doku scampered infield, De Bruyne read his run, fashioned an underlap, possession was delivered, and a rapid cross caused Juve to fling bodies at the ball to clear.
Walker – oddly – seems to have been written off everywhere as suddenly geriatric and slow as he runs backwards. If the right-back is an easy patsy for City’s ills – he is 34, and may have slowed fractionally – the error that had Vlahovic bearing down on Ederson’s goal will have had some penning the career obituaries in told-you-so mode.
The wider story of the first half for City was the same as in recent times. They lacked effervescence and confidence: a quaint state for the winners of the past four Premier League titles which will seem even stranger when looking back at this period.
Jump-leads are required to shock City back to what they have been and what Guardiola is sure they can be again. De Bruyne created a moment that might have done the trick, but Haaland fluffed his lines. A swivel-and-dragback was followed by a cute pass that wrongfooted Juve and put Haaland in. But he could not finish and Guardiola rocked on his heels in frustration; not for the first time.
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His next act was the hands-above-the-head clap used for over-encouragement and certainly apt following Walker blasting a short pass to De Bruyne straight out. Up went Guardiola’s arms and the flat pattern of City’s play continued.
Motta’s men were stuck in their own rut, unable to knit any sequence together, so City kindly aided them with one more defensive farce. After Federico Gatti’s scissor-kick was repelled by Ederson, Gvardiol’s clearance missed Walker, ceding the ball to Manuel Locatelli. He crossed, Vlahovic headed, and although it was straight at City’s goalkeeper, the ball bounced off his chest and squeezed into the bottom left corner despite his despairing dive.
Juve were up to 14th, City down two places to 22nd. Grealish’s dancing feet slipped in Bernardo Silva but his shot was blocked. Rúben Dias had spoken of the team’s travails being a chance to show character, but Ederson, once more, spilled a cross and City were teetering.
Where was the carousel pass-play? The swagger and certainty in front of goal? As in Guardiola’s first season, conviction was lacking. City went trophyless then. They may do again this year.
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