Manchester City's dizzying collapse seems to have no endalso defeated today in Birmingham at the hands of Aston Villa in the match valid for the seventeenth matchday of the 2024/25 Premier League. Duran and Rogers' goals condemn the Citizens, confirming once again the endless crisis of Pep Guardiola's men, who shorten the distance only in injury time with Foden. Deserved victory for the Villans, good and cynical at exploiting the defensive amnesia of the City rearguard, now increasingly dolled up and a distant memory of the stronghold it was in past years.
Citizens also affected by injuries
The situation seems to be getting worse from week to week from every point of view. To certify the unwritten law that when things can go wrong then they will get worse, also come the continuous physical problems and injuries for Guardiola's boys. The tip of the balance in this sense is certainly the injury of Rodri, the team's true balancer: the team's collapse began precisely in conjunction with the rupture of the cruciate ligament in the knee of the 2024 Ballon d'Or winner, who will not return before the next season. Already last year there were several signs that without Rodri the team would lose part of its magic, now the inexorable and tangible certainty is arriving: without the Spanish midfielder the team does not perform and suffers enormously in the transition phase from defense to attack and vice versa.
Even today, luck certainly didn't smile on the Manchester team, who found Akanji and Stones again from the first minute, but lost Ruben Dias and Ederson due to injury. Stones himself was also forced to come off at half-time due to a new physical problem, making room for an increasingly struggling Walker, who committed a serious error on the occasion of Rogers' second goal. De Bruyne returned in November but seems like a distant relative of the player who enchanted at the Etihad until a few months ago, certainly not helped by the identity card that says 33 years old. Erling Haaland, scorer of only 4 goals in the last two months, also ended up in this negative vortex.
Manchester City, the numbers of the crisis
The numbers are merciless: it's about the ninth defeat in the last twelve games between the championship, Champions League and League Cup. In this interval of matches only one victory came, at home against Nottingham Forest: the convincing 3-0 seemed like it could be a turning point in this first part of the season, but immediately after came the draw against Crystal Palace and the three consecutive knockouts against Juventus, Manchester United and today's one which sent the team back into the abyss. Taking into consideration the results from the tenth day to now, i.e. the months of November and December, the Manchester City is the worst team in the Premier League with only four points accumulated, equal to Southampton. However, the Saints will take the field tomorrow at Craven Cottage against Fulham for the 17th matchday, and if they were to manage to get even just one point, they would leave the Citizens alone at the bottom of this special ranking.
The ranking is only a reflection of the current situation, and currently sees City sixth with 27 points, nine behind leaders Liverpool (who however have two games less); paradoxically, however, the league table could be the only thing to hold on to at the moment: although the top is far away, the Champions League zone, i.e. the fourth place occupied by Nottingham Forest, is in fact only two points away. Even big names like Chelsea and Arsenal are not too far behind (34 and 30 points respectively), so at least on paper a recovery certainly doesn't seem impossible. The problem, however, emerges precisely when looking at the team, which seems disheartened and lacking the magic that had characterized the last extraordinary seasons.
Guardiola, is the magic over?
The magic seems to have vanished primarily from Manchester City's leader, Pep Guardiola, and this spreads to the whole team. In fact, the Catalan coach appears increasingly nervous and in pain, and even today he demonstrated this during the chants of teasing from opposing fans about his dismissal, a practice that has been widespread for several weeks now in English stadiums. The collapse of the Citizens risks having repercussions on the future of the former Barcelona coach, who, despite the renewal, certainly does not appear solid on the bench of the English champions. Much will also depend on the sentence arriving in 2025 on those 115 charges which could also cost the club exclusion from the English top flight, but now it is too early to talk about the future and the hypothesis of a post-Guardiola situation.
The impression, seeing the total disintegration that the team is facing, is that something may have already leaked into the environment, or at least that it has influenced the minds and consequently the performances of the players. The fact remains that straightening out the situation is not impossible, but the consequences of this period could be felt for a long time, in what is undoubtedly Guardiola's worst period in his entire career as a manager.
