PEP Guardiola gave his players three days off and told them to forget about football at the start of the week.
Well Manchester City’s stumbling stars either miss-heard their manager or have a case of terminal amnesia.
Because they certainly couldn’t remember how to play when they ran out at Villa Park, as a season on the slide plummeted to new depths.
Beaten for the NINTH time in the past 12 games – anyone suggesting that two months back would have been led to a room with padded walls – and EIGHT away losses on the trot.
The manager who was being hailed almost unanimously as the best on the planet, suddenly now insisting himself that he isn’t good enough.
A points tally lower than at any stage in the past 15 years, and a return over the past eight games poorer than the entire Premier League bar equally-bad basement boys Southampton.
No wonder Guardiola claims that sleeping and eating have become a problem. But not half as much as winning clearly has.
Oh and if that wasn’t bad enough, here’s a little salt to tip into the wounds as well…chief destroyer at Villa Park was a man whose footballing days began in a City shirt, too.
Morgan Rogers never pulled on a first team shirt before joining the endless list of young talent who were left to carve a career elsewhere. And he ain’t half doing that!
He did plenty of carving against his old employers, that’s for sure. Right through the centre of their defence, generally speaking.
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For the manner in which he unselfishly teed up Jhon Duran for the dagger-to-the-heart opener…and then for the swivel-and-shoot drive for their second.
So much for that feet-up break being the inspirational spark you hoped, Pep. City, in fact, could have been trailing inside 20 seconds.
Josko Gvardiol’s ball back to keeper Stefan Ortega, in for the crocked Ederson, never threatened to go close to reaching its target.
Instead Duran pounced like a dog on a joint of ham and his eyes lit up at the clear path ahead. Sixth goal in six starts coming up…until Ortega did well to push it behind.
lose shave for City, then. But off the hook once would shake them from their slumbers, at least. Well as it happens, not in the slightest.
Lucas Digne whipped over the corner, Ezri Konsa stooped to flick on a header at the near post and Ortega clawed it out from under the frame of his goal.
Replays showed the bulk of the ball had already crossed the line…but crucially not all of it had. Villa didn’t have long to wait until there was no argument.
Although in truth, City could hardly have shown them a more direct route if they’d laid out signs marked “this way to goal.”
All it took was three swift, incisive and smart passes and Ortega was picking the ball out of his net.
First from keeper Emi Martinez to Youri Tielemans, and then with a killer ball through the middle from the Villa midfielder.
This time Rogers was the one racing clear. Yet when he could see the whites of the target, he knocked it square to Duran, who swept into a gaping goal.
Whether the Columbian would have been quite as happy to tee up his team-mate given a reversal of roles is doubtful. Villa were certainly happy Rodgers handed him a gimme.
For all City saw so much more of the ball, it was hard to claim Unai Emery’s side didn’t deserve their lead.
Possession counts for little if you do nothing with it…and Pep’s boys very rarely did. Villa, though, were a threat every time they went forward.
Duran had a second ruled out for a hair’s breadth offside call and Ortega had to produce a get-down-low stop every bit as impressive as his first minute one to deny Rogers.
Again, City’s one-time young hopeful didn’t have long to wait until he put the record straight.
This time skipper John McGinn was the architect, dancing his way across the champions’ backline, shimmying to his right, stepping to his left and surely about to shoot.
Instead, though, he rolled a square pass to Rogers, who let the ball come across him before driving it back into the opposite corner and beyond Ortega.
As for City’s moments to remember? Well there was a low drive from Phil Foden in the first half that Martinez did well to push behind.
Then there was a typical late-arrival burst into the box from Gvardiol when he couldn’t get above Jack Grealish’s cross and could only flick over the top.
Oh, and we mustn’t forget that stoppage time lifeline from Foden when he finally discovered the way back to goal – for the first time this season – to give City hope.
Faint, and not for long, as it happens. You never thought it would be anything but. And certainly nothing but a home triumph would have been fair and just.
Pep, as ever, faced up in front of the City fans as the home ones taunted him with chants of being sacked in the morning.
Even in the midst of this crisis you’d still laugh that off as unthinkable…but the fact it is looming into vision as a faint possibility shows how bad things have become.
