Manchester City is coming off two straight losses and faces its most difficult group stage encounter this week in the Champions League.
After their Champions League match against Leipzig last season, Pep Guardiola did the extraordinary thing of addressing his team on the field.
Manchester City’s manager encouraged his team to keep their heads up after the first leg of their round-of-16 match ended in a 1-1 deadlock. He carried that battling spirit into his postgame comments, when he mocked the notion that they should win games like that by a score of 5-0.
Perhaps the high stakes were due to the fact that City had previously beaten Sporting 5-0 and then beaten RB Leipzig 7-0 in the same competition. When his squad is performing at a high level, its opponents have a hard time keeping up.
But Guardiola was doing what he had to do in response to the circumstances. City were out of sorts heading into the game, so he used encouragement to motivate his players, and the media played up the difficulty of the opposition as a way to win.
When the pressure is on, City’s management knows they can rely on Guardiola to make the proper strategy calls and find the winning combination. Because he can adapt to any situation, whether it is a player’s injury or a lack of talent acquired during the transfer window, he deserves the title of finest coach in the world.
Even though City is returning to Leipzig, this time the stakes are much lower. They are leading the Premier League and can afford to lose this game and still make the playoffs.
However, City’s two losses have shown that there are problems beyond the unfortunate depletion of the roster due to injury. Guardiola and sports director Txiki Begiristain have consciously decided to keep the team smaller than they could otherwise.
The ensuing league loss against Wolves undercut the appropriateness of the choice to take the Carabao Cup less seriously. The situation was made worse by the fact that a lesser team performed better than a stronger one had at Molineux against Newcastle.
Several key players are currently out of sorts. If Erling Haaland had been more focused this season, he would have doubled his goal total by now. Meanwhile, nobody volunteered to play Rodri’s role over the weekend, and Jack Grealish has yet to regain his form following an injury.
Many of the players bear some responsibility for the sloppy performance that led to the loss against Wolves (including the missed second yellow card for the game-winner). It is still Guardiola’s obligation to discover the winning formula that would end the losing streak at two games.
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