Pep Guardiola only makes substitutions like that when the game is won. With Manchester City going 3-0 up against Feyenoord on Tuesday night, it was time to get some fresh legs on in stable surroundings. But these are not stable times at City and — do not adjust your sets — nothing seems to be going right.
When Kevin De Bruyne, James McAtee and Jamai Simpson-Pusey came on to get some minutes under their belts, City were coasting towards a much-needed victory. Erling Haaland had finished a sweeping move and normal service was about to be resumed.
They had reached the three-goal threshold that has traditionally been Guardiola’s cue to give minutes to the players he feels need an extra helping hand — Kalvin Phillips, Sergio Gomez, Cole Palmer, Matheus Nunes in the past couple of seasons.
It is a staple of the Etihad Stadium experience, a sign of normality: City are going to win this match, get ready for a fairly sedate final 20 minutes. Maybe they score another one, maybe not, but they will win.
Those assurances, right now, are a thing of the past. Forget everything you thought you knew. City, the team that has won six out of the last seven Premier League titles, one of the best teams in history, became the first Champions League side to have a three-goal lead at the 75-minute mark and not win.
It was not a dream, the match finished 3-3. There were boos at the final whistle! Guardiola was asked about that and he said fair enough. “People come here not to remember success of the past,” he reasoned, “they come here to see the team win and perform well.”
He was asked about the substitutes, too, but they were not the problem — it’s everything else.
He was asked about the big scratch on his nose and he said he cut himself with his fingernail — which probably explains all the others visible in the television interviews as well. He either spent the match looking after a feral cat, or scratching his head in the search for answers.
Given how strange things appear right now you would not rule out the cat, but Guardiola has been an arch head-scratcher at the best of times, and these are among the worst.
What answers are there to be found? There are some very obvious shortcomings on the pitch which easily explain their recent defeats — for instance, the lack of legs in midfield and the resultant ease with which teams can play through them and get at a defence beleaguered by injuries.
They have played very well in patches during these past six matches, and were solid enough for the most part on Tuesday, but it is now evident that the problems run deeper than physical shortcomings like age or injuries: the squad’s confidence must be at an all-time low.
Even one of the most dependable players this season, Josko Gvardiol, has become bogged down, culpable for two goals against Tottenham at the weekend and two goals on Tuesday.
“We lost a lot of games lately, we are fragile and of course we needed a victory, the game was good for the confidence,” Guardiola said. “We were playing at a good level but the first time something happened, we had problems.”
Feyenoord, having drawn level, ran back to their half in fear of the City suckerpunch, and in fairness Jack Grealish did strike the crossbar, but the Dutch side were so — understandably — keen to hold onto their point that they did not seem to realise that they could have had even more had they wanted to.
And next up is Anfield, where even the most invincible-looking City sides have struggled over the years. Granted, that was against a slightly more ruthless beast in Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, but what Arne Slot’s side might lack in chaos they make up for in control, and that is, after all, what Guardiola’s great teams have been based on. It has been control above all else, in fact, but that is something they just cannot manage now.
“We were a team always to concede few, few goals in these eight or nine years, we were so stable in the games, to control, to defend well, and now it is not going to happen,” Guardiola lamented. “We cannot close the games and every time they arrived, they scored.”
It leaves City in the kind of situation that they have been able to kick back and enjoy from their sofas over the past few years, when Manchester United have been in the bowels of a crisis and had to come up with something against Liverpool. The whole world has, not always correctly, watched on and predicted double-digit scorelines.
It will be some crumb of comfort for City fans that United still have plenty of issues of their own but suddenly Guardiola’s players are considered the lambs to the slaughter.
Guardiola has been arguing with plenty of justification recently that a drop-off of this kind was inevitable — he has been amazed, in fact, that his team have kept coming back year after year to keep playing well and keep winning. He always used to point out that all the other Premier League champions had massive struggles the next season, and it checks out, they all have. United, Chelsea, Leicester, even Liverpool finished way off the pace. Even City, before Guardiola rocked up.
They were always going to have a bad patch given the amount of games they have played over the past few years, never mind the intensity of them, but surely nobody expected anything like this?
Liverpool are the worst possible opponents at the weekend but it is not hyperbole to suggest that games against Nottingham Forest, Crystal Palace (away), United and Aston Villa (away) before Christmas will pose a few problems themselves.
And what about the Champions League? Many would have expected City to finish in the top two of this new format, but they now need to win their final three group games to ensure a place in the top eight, the teams guaranteed to make it to the knockout round. To do that they need to win at Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain, and then beat Club Brugge at home.
City are not finished by any means. Guardiola has signed on for another two years, and despite the current chaos there is nobody else that would be better placed to put things right. They will be back, if not this season (quite possibly this season), then next.
But things are likely to get worse, possibly much worse, before they get better. Forget everything you thought you knew.
(DARREN STAPLES/AFP via Getty Images)
