Erling Haaland may have thought Manchester City’s problems were behind them but there is clearly a long way to go.
“I feel like a really positive energy in the club,” Haaland said on Tuesday in Paris. “It’s been a hard period, everyone knows that but I feel energy. We are training really good and I feel we are over that now.”
But Wednesday’s 4-2 defeat against Paris Saint-Germain, themselves battling against Champions League elimination, laid bare most of the problems that have led to City needing to win their final league phase game next week to earn just a spot in the play-offs.
Pep Guardiola’s side may well do the job by beating Club Brugge next week but if they want to do anything in the competition this season, and indeed qualify for next season’s edition via a lofty Premier League finish, they have got a long, long way to go.
Canal Plus, the French broadcaster, advertised this match using one of those vital signs machines you see in hospitals that display a person’s pulse, conveying just how much these two teams have been hanging on, but as the match went on, PSG seemed to get stronger and stronger as City wilted.
The hosts scored their fourth with the final kick of the match long after after City went 2-0 up eight minutes into the second half. Rather than ease their way to victory, from that moment on, they could barely get a foothold in the game again. This is the ninth time City have been leading in a match this season and not won, the third time in their last four Champions League games.
These are the kind of shocking stats that cropped up at the end of last year; things that do not happen to this City side but things that are entirely believable if you actually see them play.
Afterwards, Guardiola admitted PSG were tactically superior, that they had managed to create an overload in midfield and stopped City from getting much meaningful possession, but there were other tenets that underpinned that.
“They were quicker, faster, they win the duels, we could not cope,” he said. “They were fast.”
These are exactly the areas that have troubled City so much and things that cannot be fixed by good vibes alone.
There have been reasons to be cheerful over the past few days, bringing the kind of good energy that Haaland was talking about. The big striker has signed a whopping nine-and-a-half-year deal, two centre-backs have been signed in Abdukodir Khusanov and Vitor Reis, and Omar Marmoush is expected to be announced as a City player on Thursday morning. City are trying to put this right as quickly as possible and those moves could well improve things in the long-term.
But as Guardiola’s new contract and Rodri’s Ballon d’Or presentation ahead of City’s game against Tottenham in November showed, positive feelings are not enough to fix the structural issues in the team — City lost that match 4-0 and things have only fleetingly got better in the 14 games since.
The big issue this season, the one that compounded Rodri’s season-long absence due to a knee injury, is the lack of pace and physicality in midfield. Until that is put right — at this point, it has to be in the transfer window — they surely cannot turn things around and get back to their best level.
The good news is that City continue to try to sign a central midfielder this month. Mateo Kovacic had a night to forget in Paris but he is their most mobile option in the engine room. He was taken off with 20 minutes to go but it was Ilkay Gundogan, who has struggled more than most when faced with pacy runners, that replaced him. Kevin De Bruyne continues to rage against the dying of the light but he had to come off too.
”The connection with Bernardo (Silva) and Kova was not possible or was not good and after, we could not make the process,” Guardiola said, discussing the tactical issues his side faced. “And in terms of transitions, we cannot cope with them. They are faster and quicker. We have to defend with the ball and we did not do that.”
Ahead of the game, Guardiola said that both new centre-backs, 19-year-old Reis and 20-year-old Khusanov, are ready for action and that should help to put some of the recurring issues right. Ruben Dias, in and out of the team since November due to injuries, was forced off at half-time, while Matheus Nunes has been used as an unconvincing emergency right-back.
Jack Grealish, who Guardiola called out for his application recently, came off the bench and scored, helping City add goals from the wings, something they have been lacking in this bad run too. That was only after he came on for Savinho, who was frustrating, while Jeremy Doku has picked up another injury.
City still appear to be stuck in the loop that led to all those defeats at the end of last year. Recurring injuries, tired bodies and weak displays. Those things were still evident in victories against Leicester and West Ham, and it turns out that a 6-0 victory at Ipswich was not the end of their struggles.
“We have a last chance against Brugge (on January 29) and if we don’t go through, it’s because we don’t deserve it,” Guardiola says.
Not that they can play in the Champions League just yet, but Marmoush looks like he can inject some dynamism into the forward line and perhaps the aggressive Khusanov can drag his team-mates through some battles.
City are at least trying to get themselves out of this mess as quickly as possible, but there is a long way to go.
(Top photo: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
