Manchester City Summon The Spirit Of The 90s And It’s Scary

If Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola was hoping to summon memories of the club’s past to bolster a title challenge, he probably hoped for something of the 2018/19 vintage, even a 2011/12 performance.

What he got was a vibe that was very much of the late 1990s, a period in City’s history defined by self-destructive chaos. The iconic moments were humiliation, time-wasting for a result that would lead to relegation, or scoring an audacious lobbed own goal to lose a vital bottom-of-the-table clash.

Fans used to refer to the consistent ability to farcically pull disaster from the jaws of success as ‘typical City,’ while a former manager described the tension that preceded such moments as ‘Cityitus.’

So as strange as it might be, fans of a particular vintage would have seen the sudden and terrifying collapse that occurred at Craven Cottage, which saw City turn a 1-5 advantage into a nervy 4-5 finale, as oddly familiar.

For the neutral, the game was an enthralling encounter that nearly became an all-time classic had Josko Gvardiol not cleared a Josh King finish off the line late in the game.

Not that Pep Guardiola was enjoying the spectacle.

“Did you enjoy it? I lost my hair,” Guardiola said in the postgame.

“I thought the players were happy to work with me. It’s the Premier League. I know you’re going to ask what happened, but I don’t have an answer.

“Football is emotion – all the goals were bad defending, we go so deep to defend these kinds of crosses, we have to occupy the spaces a bit better, but we made incredible things today because I know how difficult the team is.

“It was impossible for me to enjoy it. At 5-1 maybe, but at 5-4 I was watching the clock more than the game. It was tough and it would have been tougher if we could not get the result, but I will remember I was there.

“At 5-1 you [the media] thought it was finished. You had written your articles. Tomorrow: ‘Manchester City are back … finally.’ And after, to the trash. You have to start again.”

Technically, the result put “pressure’ on Arsenal ahead of the Gunners’ game against Brentford.

The North Londoners’ lead at the top of the division has been cut to two points or one result.

But if Arsenal is to draw anything from Manchester City’s last two games, it’s that this is not a challenger they need to fear too much.

Conceding six goals against Leeds United and Fulham, sides firmly in the bottom half of the Premier League rankings, is not the level of champions.
That City has emerged with the points on both occasions is fortunate rather than ominous.

As former Premier League striker Clinton Morrison said on BBC Radio 5 Live: “You can’t expect to win the Premier League when you defend like that.

“There’s a problem with Manchester City defensively. I’ve said it all season that we know they can score goals, no bother with them the way they’re going forward, but defensively they have to be better.

“They need to be better defensively because you’d never see Arsenal be 5-1 up and end like that, so they have to sort that out.”

‘Sorting it out’ is easier said than done. The type of errors that led to Fulham’s goals were fundamental structural problems. As Guardiola said, the defensive line dropped very deep against the Cottagers, leaving gaping holes in the box for the opponent to exploit.

They are the type of gaps you rarely, if ever, see in Mikel Arteta’s side, which, almost to a fault, are defensively secure.

Or as Guardiola said: “Arsenal are so strong and so solid.

“So I know what we have to do, I know if we drop points it will be so difficult, we have to put in our mindset that it will be difficult, but at the same time, the Premier League is so long.

“I promise you I am the oldest manager in the Premier League and have enough experience to make a long, long run to try to fight to win the Premier League. It is so long.

“Premier League is so long, many things will happen. We won six Premier Leagues, four or five when we were in December, January, or February, we were behind.

“The team who wins the Premier League is the team who grows during the months and this is what we try to do. No injuries, it’s so long.

“But at the same time, if we push, we will be better and push ourselves and control the situations better, the emotions, and we will see what happens.

The following two months will be the decisive period on all fronts this season. All three of City, Arsenal, and Chelsea face gruelling fixture lists that will invariably cause problems.

The additional games in the Champions League mean that an already congested festive period will be even more jam-packed.

Whoever navigates that successfully will put themselves in the best position to triumph, as Guardiola well understands.

“From [Leeds] on, we have eight games just in December. In January, we have eight games. So they are the two months that are more complicated,” he added.

“If we are able to survive and be there in February or March, for sure we’re going to be there. But now, I don’t know where we’re going to be in February.”

One thing is clear: for that to happen, he’ll need to hope the ‘Typical City’ tribute act remains confined to the first part of the season.