WATCHING Pep Guardiola scratching his head live on television on Tuesday night was the ultimate sign of a manager at his wits’ end.
Yes, the Spanish sorcerer was only scraping his head and face.
You didn’t have to be Monty Python’s Black Knight to declare the cut on his nose “only a flesh wound”.
But for a Guardiola side to throw away a three goal lead at HOME inside the final few minutes demonstrated the epic scale of City’s decline and fall.
Even a few weeks ago, despite the ongoing off field cloud of the “115” alleged financial rules breaches that is being heard in a central London venue, City were not far from their customary relentless selves.
Five straight defeats, including three in the Prem, were capped off by that 4-0 home thumping by Spurs on Saturday – a game that was supposed to be a celebration of the manager signing his new two-year deal.
And Guardiola’s admissions that his team are “fragile” and “not stable”, joking that he wanted to “hurt himself” and his general bearing demonstrated just how much has gone wrong, so quickly.
Sun Sport looks at the key issues that must be addressed.
The ovation the City fans gave the Spain midfielder as he raised his Ballon d’Or trophy before the Tottenham trauma told its own story.
The reality is that Rodri’s absence has left a hole that nobody in the City squad can fill on their own.
Not Mateo Kovacic – currently on the missing list – or John Stones, or Rico Lewis. Nobody.
Instead of a solid defensive screen, City have begun to represent a farmer’s stile. A bit of legwork and you are over the top.
It has been an open invitation for teams that have a desire to hurt City – as Spurs, Bournemouth, Brighton, Sporting and now Feyenoord have shown.
Guardiola has never been shy about his desire to reinvent football, time and again.
Perhaps, though, he has to ponder adding to the defensive security of his side by a change of shape.
If he has not got one player to do the Rodri role, maybe he needs two in there?
Guardiola has not hidden how much he has been hurt by the injury crisis that started before the season kicked off.
Oscar Bobb had been earmarked for a key role this term but the Norwegian broke his leg in August and will not return until at least February.
Then came Rodri’s season-ending cruciate injury against Arsenal.
Kevin de Bruyne and Jack Grealish have made just four Prem starts out of 12 games, Stones three, Nathan Ake only one.
And with things already teetering, the calf injury that forced Ruben Dias off after 45 minutes of the Carabao Cup defeat at Tottenham feels like the straw that broke the camel’s back.
City have conceded 15 goals in the last five games. Dias is the lynchpin of the back line. It’s not rocket science.
Alan Hansen was famously wrong when he declared “you don’t win anything with kids”.
But maybe what we are seeing with Pep’s side is that the Premier League is no country for old men.
Six of City’s outfield squad are now 30-somethings – and it is starting to look that way, too.
Timo Werner happily accepting the invitation to run legs off Kyle Walker to set up Tottenham’s fourth at the weekend was symbolic of the 34-year-old’s sudden physical limitations.
Walker’s pace has always been his super-power. He looks like he has now swallowed Kryptonite.
Many City fans celebrated Ilkay Gundogan’s return in the summer after his unhappy year at Barcelona but those cheers have stalled.
Gundogan was walking in thick mud as James Maddison gave him the slip at the weekend, while Bernardo Silva has been a pale imitation of his normal self.
Guardiola has driven his players relentlessly for eight years. Many of them have been on the journey with him all the way.
But it looks as if they have run out of road.
Where City used to know they could out-play and out-run sides, that is no longer the case.
It did not help that the successive Prem games City lost were against arguably the three of the best footballing sides in the league.
All of them are teams that want to have a go.
The fear factor has disappeared and opponents are seeing the vulnerabilities rather than being cowed by the strengths.
Ever since the arrival of Erling Haaland, City have been almost unstoppable.
The Norwegian has led the way but he has not been alone.
And this season, by contrast, with Haaland having gone off the boil in recent weeks, his team-mates have been unable to fill the void.
In their 12 Prem matches so far, City have scored 22 goals – fewer than Spurs, Liverpool and Chelsea and the same number as Brentford.
By contrast, at the same point last term, they had scored 32 and in 2022-23 it was 33.
Haaland’s 12 goal return is only marginally down on the previous campaigns when he had 14 two years ago and 13 last time round.
But Phil Foden, whose 14 goals in the second half of last term exceed Haaland’s tally, has yet to find the net in the Prem and defender Josko Gvardiol – whose blunders at the back seem to be on repeat – is second-highest scorer with three.
You have to wonder whether Guardiola is now regretting his decision to sanction the departure of Manchester born and bred Cole Palmer and Argentina’s World Cup-winning Julian Alvarez.
Palmer has scored 32 in 59 appearances for Chelsea, including seven in 14 games this term, while Alvarez’ free-kick at Sparta Prague was his ninth in 20 for Atletico Madrid.
City bagged £124m for the pair. But keeping them would have been priceless.
When it mattered, Guardiola’s team ALWAYS knew how to find a way.
It looked that way again when Stones headed the injury time winner at Wolves last month.
Yet now it all feels very different. A team that is starting to look for self-pity as soon as something goes against them.
Those losses at Spurs in the Carabao and then Bournemouth might have been a blip.
But three more are a full-scale crisis.
The way City turned their toes up in the second half against Sporting was the first real sign of what Guardiola is now admitting is “frailty”.
Then Brighton scored twice in five minutes to turn the game at the Amex on its head, with City suddenly powerless to respond.
Against Spurs, the air went out of the City balloon as soon as Maddison scored his first. The mental paralysis was evident.
And on Tuesday night, from three up and cruising against Feyenoord, it was a remarkable implosion.
Under that sort of pressure, a manager needs his players to stand up and be counted.
Too many are folding, seeming to feel themselves incapable of affecting change.
And now, looming, is what would be the biggest test of the season yet even in normal circumstances.
City have not won in front of a crowd at Anfield since 2003, when Nicolas Anelka stole the points in the last minute.
Another defeat would leave them 11 points adrift of Arne Slot’s side.
They know what they face, on and off the pitch.
This time it’s the visitors who will have to walk on through the storm, one that is raging around Guardiola and his squad.
