City’s decline leads to new era yet to fully reveal itself

Leaders Liverpool are showing signs of weariness before facing Guardiola’s side, an inevitable consequence of extra matches imposed by the modern game

Núñez’s miss at Villa could end up as the equivalent of Kevin Keegan’s ‘I would love it’ rant

22 Feb 2025

THE GUARDIAN / Sport

Jonathan Wilson

There has been something pleasingly old-fashioned about the Premier League title race this season. It may be a modern phenomenon that the side top of the table have lost only one of 26 games, and that the side in second have lost two, but after the years of champions habitually racking up 90 points and more, the general fallibility has been refreshing.

Liverpool are still on course for 89 points but they are not implacable, remorseless winners in the way Manchester City so often were. They reached a peak in their 2-0 home win over Real Madrid at the end of November and, although they were comfortable winners over City the following Sunday, there has been a sense since of a side, if not quite clinging on to the mountain top, then at the very least not striding quite so confidently along the ridge.

They have won only half of their past 14 games, although that is a statistic that requires contextualisation given it includes three defeats of limited relevance (the first leg of a Carabao semi they went on to win, a Champions League dead rubber and the FA Cup exit with a much-changed side).

Yet while the significance of those games can be downplayed, it is also true that Liverpool are stuttering in the league. They didn’t play particularly well at Bournemouth, when even Slot said they had been a little fortunate. Their past two away games have been uproarious 2-2 draws, far removed from the understated calm of many of Liverpool’s wins earlier in the season. Slot himself, previously so assured, lost his cool at Everton, and Darwin Núñez’s miss at Aston Villa could end up as the equivalent of Kevin Keegan’s “I would love it” rant; the symbolic moment at which the title was lost. But perhaps the greatest concern of all was Liverpool’s second half against Wolves last weekend, tying up and failing to register a shot against the team currently 17th in the league.

Slot appears unconcerned, pointing out that titles are rarely won without blips here and there. Which is true. It’s only recently that the financial stratification of football has made relentless excellence possible. Traditionally, almost all champions have had their off days, the games that just have to be plodded through and endured, the points salvaged from a scrap. Drawing tricky away games never used to be a problem.

The question, then, is twofold. There is the short-term problem of whether Liverpool can hold on – and an eight-point lead is extremely healthy, even having played a game more, particularly given Arsenal, their only realistic challenger, have lost their forward line to hamstring injuries. And then there is the longer-term question of whether this sense of comparative uncertainty is a permanent state or a one-season blip.

Certainly it’s hard at this stage ever to see City returning to the levels of dominance they once enjoyed. That’s not to say they might not win the Premier League again but once an aura has gone, it’s very hard to retrieve. Quite aside from the various problems with injury and ageing players and the failure of recruitment that led them to sign four players in January, what was striking on Wednesday was their passivity in losing to Real Madrid. They still have the players to hammer a soft-pedalling Newcastle but belief has gone.

Perhaps that is a corollary of the oft-noted habit of Pep Guardiola sides to concede goals in clutches. The mechanism is supremely sophisticated, perhaps better honed

than any coach has made their teams before, but that requires players to sublimate themselves to the system and that means when the mechanism glitches, there is an absence of personal fight, of initiative, of the capacity to grab a game and drag it back. Guardiola’s instructions are detailed, often exhausting, and at times counterintuitive; if poor results lead to a loss of faith in him, are players as prepared to execute his game plans with quite the same rigour?

It is possible Guardiola’s gifts are waning. In a profession in which few manage a decade at the highest level, he is in his 16th season of perpetual evolution, trying to stay ahead of rivals who are constantly analysing his work, replicating or forging counter-strategies. Certainly in neither of the games against Madrid was there any sense of a viable plan to combat the axis of Vinícius Júnior and Kylian Mbappé. Even if Josko Gvardiol can contain Mohamed Salah tomorrow, who can operate at right-back against Cody Gakpo or Luis Díaz?

In part, City’s decline is the result of exhaustion, which feels like a defining feature of this season. Players and their union have protested about the schedule, the constant bloating of tournaments and invention of new ones, which, combined with the intensity of the modern game, has led to fatigue.

That may be the biggest factor explaining the dynamic of this season: weariness will always lead to inconsistency. Although Liverpool have been less afflicted by injury than many, tiredness was clearly on show in the second half against Wolves; it may not quite be like one of Leeds’s collapses under Don Revie, but anxiety plus fatigue can do strange things.

Last time there was a season in which the Premier League’s middle class punched so hard was 2015-16; the grandees responded with a reset and vast spending. Profitability and sustainability rules may make that impossible now; it may be that this slightly more competitive age is here to stay. It may be that, in as far as such things can be discerned, that means a slightly lower quality at the top end, but equally there is arguably more fun in the raggedness and unpredictability.

For several seasons, Manchester City against Liverpool was the obvious marquee fixture of the season, a contest between the two sides who had set new standards. Tomorrow, though, while it may be champions against likely successors, their meeting seems also to represent something else: not only the fading of one great force and the unsteady emergence of another, but the passing from an era in which the best teams were dominant to one in which a welcome unconvincingness reigns.

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Guardiola says he must offload injury-prone and fatigued players

Ageing squad contains many who cannot sustain heavy schedule, admits manager

22 Feb 2025

THE GUARDIAN / Sport

Jamie Jackson

Pep Guardiola has said that players who cannot “sustain” Manchester City’s schedule because of serial injuries or fatigue will have to leave, with those under threat including Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones, Nathan Aké, Ilkay Gündogan and Bernardo Silva.

In Wednesday’s 3-1 Champions League defeat at Real Madrid, Stones became the latest City player to be struck down, the defender forced off after eight minutes by a thigh problem, with fears his season could be over. This was only the 30-year-old’s 20th appearance this season owing to injuries, with Guardiola suggesting that Stones and Manuel Akanji, who is out with an abductor problem, may require surgery. He said: “The next hours, days, we’ll know if he needs surgery or not. Like Manuel Akanji.”

Guardiola is clear that many of his players cannot play 50 or more games, and with 11 of his squad being aged 30 or more by September, he suggested some will have to depart.

The Catalan said: “That is a reality. We have to sit down with the doctors, with physios, with the players, with the agents, and be clear that some of them cannot sustain every three days, every month, every two months, playing every three, four days. So this is the reality. There’s one more year, [then] a World Cup.”

Aké, who is 30 and replaced Stones against Real, has played only 16 times this term. The 33-year-old De Bruyne was out for nearly two months from mid-september because of a pelvic problem and last season suffered a serious hamstring injury that limited him to 26 appearances. Guardiola was asked why the Belgian was an unused substitute in Madrid.

“It’s just a decision,” he said. “It’s on what I have seen – for a few reasons. Also Jérémy [Doku] didn’t play – the last game he played was Ipswich, he was unbelievable, and then afterwards he was injured. But maybe for the demands of the way we need to play, for the absence of strength that we have and physicality, we need more control and not up and down.”

Those who will also be 30 or more by September are Akanji, Gündogan, Silva, Jack Grealish, Mateo Kovacic, Stefan Ortega, Ederson and Kyle Walker, who is on loan at Milan.

Guardiola believes the schedule is too heavy. “It’s a lot of games,” he said. “More than 50 games is too much for the players in the season. It’s too much for the human being, for the body cannot sustain.”

Erling Haaland missed the defeat by Real Madrid after hurting his knee in the closing stages of the home victory over Newcastle last Saturday. The club had been hopeful the Norwegian could feature, and scans have not indicated any damage, but Haaland felt pain on the day of the game and consequently remained on the bench.

Guardiola said yesterday he was unsure whether the 24-year-old would be fit when the champions host Premier League leaders Liverpool at the Etihad Stadium tomorrow. “Maybe, but I don’t know yet,” said Guardiola when asked at his prematch press conference. “Tomorrow we will know it. We will train today and he will test, but I don’t know.”

Haaland has scored 27 goals in all competitions this season, but new signing Omar Marmoush scored a hat-trick against Newcastle, suggesting City do now have other good attacking options.

Guardiola said: “It is better to have Erling on the pitch than not have him, obviously, and with Erling we are in the position we are right now. Everybody is responsible for the good things and the bad things in the team, but of course with Erling we are stronger.”