Two sides of the English football club Manchester City were on display last weekend. On Friday, the club announced record revenue of £715 million and sustained profitability of £73.8 million, confirming once again the club’s status as a global sports powerhouse. On Sunday, City slipped from 1-0 up against Manchester United to 2-1 down in the final minutes of a tense derby match at the Etihad Stadium, the latest in a string of unexpected defeats for the champions.
Being beaten by your local rivals usually stings more than most. Losing because of historically uncharacteristic, misplaced passes and defensive errors hurts even more, especially in the context of a seemingly unprecedented stumble for the four-in-a-row Premier League title winners, who were tipped last summer to win again but now look a long way from reaching that goal.
Sunday marks a year since City wrapped up a short visit to Saudi Arabia by cruising to 4-0 victory over Fluminense in the Fifa Club World Cup final to become world champions. By the time that anniversary ticks around, the side’s current run of eight defeats in 11 matches may have become even worse. City travel to Birmingham on Saturday to take on Aston Villa, who sit two points and two places behind their visitors.
The Manchester side have averaged 0.57 points per league game since the start of November, putting them on par with bottom of the table Southampton. This is a rare moment when on- and off-field success are not in lockstep.
The champion’s sudden decline has precipitated a steady stream of commentary from analysts, fans and players. After Sunday’s match TV pundit Gary Neville noted that “these City players have won [multiple] Premier League titles – they’ve kept going, they’ve been so consistent, so reliable … they’ve grown together and [now] hit a wall together.”
Neither the playing staff nor their manager have been especially benevolent in their assessments.
Ilkay Gundogan, who played a starring role in City’s march to an historic treble of trophies only 18 months ago, had earlier referred to the side “always doing the wrong things” in games this season, while Bernardo Silva said the squad needed to “look at themselves”. Pep Guardiola said after that derby day defeat that “I’m the manager, I have to find solutions, but I don’t find solutions.”
Despite the overt pessimism of that statement, Guardiola is widely recognised as one of sport’s greatest ever innovators, constantly producing tactical tweaks and new formations to counter opponents, win games and claim titles.
Some long-term Manchester City fans, myself included, might remind others that the club’s late 20th century history is littered with worse dips in form than this and things really aren’t that bad right now. But it also may be the case that after year upon year of incredible achievements, City’s remarkable period of dominance is ending.
I’ve written before in these pages that history teaches us nothing about the relative shelf-life of sporting dominance, except, perhaps, that there are multiple examples of an unexpected and precipitous decline by a dominant club in the English game – Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Leeds offer four examples from the past 50 years. There are different reasons for decline in each of those cases, although it is also right to say that nothing lasts forever.
But it might be that this is a puzzle that organisational behaviourists and workplace anthropologists could solve. City’s transformation into their current state of underperformance has been a process not an event, despite their results seeming to drop off without apparent warning at the end of October.
The compounding effect of injuries to several important or irreplaceable players – notably Ballon d’Or winner Rodri – combined with key players losing form and showing fatigue simultaneously or “hitting a wall” as Gary Neville said, have triggered the current crisis. This offers a powerful reminder that workplace culture is never static and requires constant tending.
So how would you fix the team’s current problems? Typically, it would require several pieces of the puzzle to be examined.
Certainly, City will have to innovate again to restore their competitiveness. Over time, opponents have become more familiar with patterns of play and the way squad members are deployed on the pitch.
Shorn of squad depth by injury, suspension and circumstance, City have spent the autumn fixing problems with short-term solutions. Only when more players return from the treatment room can better assessments be made about the need for replacements, although the social media clamour for major investment in the squad has reached a crescendo and shows no sign of abating.
In the case of the derby defeat, City seemed focused on the result more than the performance, perhaps understandably after a sequence of losses, but both facets will need to be back in balance to correct the current course.
City have been slow starters in several games this year, another symbol of an accrual of fatigue, which has not typically been the case in their pomp.
The post-match comments by various players show humility, realism and a team ethic. While you could isolate certain quotes to disprove the last of those values, the squad exhibits clear understanding of what is required.
The caveat to that is that recognition is one thing, action is another – but who would genuinely back against Guardiola finding the right way out of this slump? Despite the low cadence of the team’s recent performances, the City manager is a natural and proven problem-solver.
