Manchester City’s matches are supposed to look a lot like Wednesday’s relatively comfortable 3-0 win against Nottingham Forest. When Manchester City does lose a match in the Premier League, it usually happens unexpectedly.
A wonder goal from an opponent shooting from more than 20 yards away. An uncharacteristic error in which a City defender misplays a pass. One of those days when the ball will just not go into the opponent’s net, no matter how many clear-cut scoring chances Pep Guardiola’s footballing machine produces. City typically suffers a few of these disappointments throughout the grueling nine-month season, as any team would in the competitive Premier League and in a sport known for its low week-to-week scoring.
In the past four years, City has played 152 Premier League matches. They’ve lost just 17 of them, winning the league title each season. Last year, Guardiola’s team went on a 33-match unbeaten streak in all competitions, while two years ago, they managed a 25-match unbeaten run. However, this year, the once nearly invincible soccer team has appeared vulnerable and pedestrian.
Guardiola’s team has already lost four times in the opening 14 matches of the Premier League season. It’s been knocked out of the EFL Cup before the quarterfinals and won just two of its five Champions League matches.
If it’s an accident for City to lose one game, and a regrettable error to lose two, then Manchester City’s five consecutive losses and seven matches without a win this season was enough of a seismic shift in the Premier League’s tectonic plates to measure on the Richter scale. It’s a soccer earthquake that shakes up the whole landscape, leaving behind an aging and thin squad of core players that may have finally reached the end of their recent dominance in the Premier League. The win against Forest temporarily quelled the full-blown crisis for now, but routine wins have been few and far between this year.
The shock waves resonated all the way to Liverpool on Sunday as the Anfield crowd serenaded and trolled Guardiola, singing, “You’re getting sacked in the morning” in the waning moments of Liverpool’s 2-0 demolition of the four-time defending champions.
Guardiola held up six fingers and smiled back at the crowd, signifying the number of times he’s been champion of England since joining the club in 2016. He did so with a smirk on his face, a cheeky admission of the state of his former superteam. Manchester City finally won a match against Nottingham Forest on Wednesday, 3-0, its first win since October 26. Five teams in the league have a better total expected goal difference (xGD)—a predictive metric to evaluate team strength—than City.
Just five days before the humiliating defeat at Liverpool, Manchester City blew a 3-0 lead at home to Feyenoord in a Champions League match and drew 3-3. It was a stunning collapse that exposed all of City’s flaws in a 15-minute stretch: an inability to control games with their typically suffocating press. A high defensive line that has been exploited more often than ever. A constant concession of big scoring chances and goals from point-blank range.
In his post-match press conference against Feyenoord, Guardiola had visible cuts on his face that he said he’d caused by scratching his own face repeatedly. He has to see what we all do: City hasn’t been losing because of an improbable goal here or a bad bounce there. They’re getting outplayed.
Guardiola has established himself as the master tinkerer over the years. He’s reinvented this team tactically multiple times to solve defensive injuries, to account for the lack of a true striker on the team, and then to integrate superstar striker Erling Haaland into the lineup when City signed him. Guardiola keeps a tight-knit squad of players in his trust tree and relies on them extensively.
But the depth has thinned out, the current core has aged, and Ballon d’Or winner Rodri is out for the season. Guardiola has his toughest task yet, plugging all of the holes leaking water into the hull of Manchester City’s ship.
The dramatic decline in City’s performances, at least until last night’s win, can be partially explained by the injury to Rodri, an elite defensive stopper who held City’s midfield together with duct tape and ball-winning skills. However, the problems existed before he tore his ACL in a 2-2 draw against Arsenal on September 22.
The average age of Manchester City’s playing squad this season is 27.7 years old, making it the fourth-oldest team in the league and the oldest it's been under Guardiola since his first season at the club. When he became manager, City’s squad was in transition. They finished third in his first season and then immediately became younger with new signings of prime-age players who helped City become champions in 2017-18, his second year. It was one of the most dominant teams in league history, and its 100-point single-season tally is still the record today.
Age isn’t everything in soccer, but it does closely track with a squad’s ability to press with intensity. Manchester City’s decline in pressing is noticeable when watching the game and looking at the underlying statistics. Teams have been much more efficient at stringing together passes against City than they’ve ever been in the past.
Pass completion rate allowed by year (rank):
2019-20: 75.9 percent (fifth)
2020-21: 78.4 percent (seventh)
2021-22: 75.3 percent (second)
2022-23: 78.2 percent (eighth)
2023-24: 79.8 percent (seventh)
2024-25: 82.1 percent (14th)
There’s been plenty of off-pitch drama surrounding City’s reported violations of financial fair play and pending charges in the past half decade. The investigation will seek to uncover whether City indeed spent money beyond their means in the transfer market to acquire top players. It’s currently unclear what the result of the litigation will be, but these potential violations may have contributed to City's solid hit rate on their big-money purchases early in the Guardiola era. They acquired Ilkay Gundogan (then 25) and John Stones (then 22) ahead of the 2016-17 season, and both have been key contributors in this era. They picked up Kyle Walker (then 27), Aymeric Laporte (then 23), and Ederson (then 23) in 2017-18, and all three have been mainstays in the heart of the defense and in goal for many of City’s title-winning seasons.
Once Fernandinho aged out of his prime, City flexed their financial muscle in 2019-20 and added Rodri (then 23), who has become the best all-around midfielder in the world. Center backs Nathan Aké and Ruben Dias joined City in 2020-21. City spent a lot of money, but you can’t point to a high-profile miss they made in building the spine of the team until 2021.
Since then, it’s been more of a mixed bag. In 2021, they spent 117 million euros on Jack Grealish, who has shown flourishes of productivity but struggled to become the star City hoped for. They also spent 49 million on Kalvin Phillips in 2022, 62 million for Matheus Nunes in 2023, and 30 million on Mateo Kovacic as he was nearing 30, also in 2023. Out of desperation, City brought Gundogan back on a free transfer this season, during a summer when they otherwise didn’t sign a true midfielder. They’ve had some transfer wins—Haaland and Josko Gvardiol—during this period of misses, but they’ve failed to effectively address the aging midfield.
The result of the lackluster transfer business is that Guardiola hasn’t had many midfield options who can play up to City’s usual lofty standards. He played a central midfield of Gundogan, Bernardo Silva, and Rico Lewis against Liverpool on Sunday. Gundogan is now 34, and Silva is 30 and has never been a traditional defensive midfielder. Lewis, 20, is one of the few young players to break into the City squad in recent seasons as both a midfielder and a full back.
It was no surprise that Liverpool won the game, considering both clubs’ current form. (The Reds have 35 points from the opening 14 matches of the season and are now clear favorites to win the title.) What was shocking, however, was just how easily Liverpool dominated the game and repeatedly broke through City’s defense. The Reds were on the attack right from the start, with seven shots attempted in the opening 20 minutes. Cody Gakpo scored for Liverpool shortly after his teammate Virgil van Dijk hit the post, putting them in the lead. City managed only one measly attempt at goal in the entire first half.
Liverpool chose to defend out of possession more in the second half, allowing City to have more of the ball. However, whenever City lost the ball, Liverpool quickly capitalized on it, using just two or three passes to break through City’s defense. Liverpool won a penalty on a swift counterattack against the disorganized City defense that Mo Salah converted. The Reds ultimately won 2-0, creating 3.4 expected goals in the process.
Manchester City still has the highest percentage of possession in the league this season, so it’s not that they are being outplayed territorially. City actually had more touches in the attacking penalty area than Liverpool did in their blowout loss.
But no match better encapsulates City’s structural faults than their 4-0 defeat at home to Spurs on November 23. Tottenham is one of the best transition teams in the world, and even though Manchester City outshot them 23-9, City lost 4-0 because all four of Spurs’ goals came on high-quality scoring chances. Nine shots, four goals, and 2.5 expected goals for Spurs. A fifth straight defeat for the Cityzens.
Manchester City is allowing higher-quality goal-scoring opportunities than every other team in the English top flight. That includes relegation favorites Ipswich Town and Southampton. City’s xG per shot allowed has skyrocketed to 0.16 this year.
2021-22: 0.10 (11th)
2022-23: 0.11 (10th)
2023-24: 0.12 (17th)
2024-25: 0.16 (20th)
Guardiola has City playing with an even higher defensive line than usual in an attempt to overcome their drop in pressing intensity. By condensing the space in the middle, the midfield, or lack thereof, has less ground to cover. The results thus far have been catastrophic, as City have conceded 19 goals in their last eight games. Warning signs were evident last year, as the defense started allowing more and more shots from direct attacks. Guardiola could have stemmed the tide by adding younger players to the squad’s depth chart this summer, but that didn’t happen, and the dam broke. Even before their losing streak started, City looked constantly exposed on the counterattack and allowed 2.6 expected goals in their 3-2 victory over Fulham on October 5.
It’s possible that Guardiola could demonstrate why he’s the best manager of the modern era by fitting square pegs into round holes and tactically solving an issue that runs deeper than tactics. City have gone on remarkable unbeaten runs in the past two seasons to chase down Arsenal and Liverpool and win two more league titles.
But Rodri isn’t walking through that door. And it is often challenging to find immediate impact players in the January transfer window. Guardiola has one of the most difficult tasks of his managerial career ahead of him, given the current squad’s lack of depth and aging core.
Thirty-three-year-old Kevin De Bruyne made his first start since September on Wednesday against Nottingham Forest. The attack resembled the City of old, with De Bruyne scoring a goal and City winning 3-0, ending their winless run at seven matches. With Liverpool dropping points against Newcastle, the gap between City and Liverpool at the top of the table has been reduced to nine points.
Maybe De Bruyne’s return will spark City. We’ve seen him rescue the Cityzens before, but an aging attacking midfielder is unlikely to improve their defensive issues. It’s not that City isn’t scoring goals anymore. It’s that they’re struggling not to concede. The window of dominance for this era of Manchester City is rapidly closing. It’s still slightly open for those who squint, but this version of City no longer appears to be the gold standard of the most competitive soccer league in the world.
