This must be the first time in Premier League history that a club has won consecutive games and in doing so proved they cannot win the title.
Manchester City’s 5-4 victory over Fulham on Tuesday evening was one of the most extraordinary matches in recent history. It was also one of the most revealing and most consequential about the era of Pep Guardiola, which is now in its 11th year and on this evidence winding down.
On the most basic level it simply isn’t possible to win titles with a defence so shaky. Man City have conceded 16 goals in 14 games and are moving in the wrong direction, the constant openness to Fulham’s attacks this week a consequence of using central midfielders in the full-back positions and struggling to understand how to play without Rodri.
And yet the problems are deeper and more abstract. There is an unmistakable, intangible feeling of an empire crumbling, of standards slipping and the centre beginning to sag.
“I'm so old, and the players don't respect me,” was Guardiola’s tongue-in-cheek explanation for his team’s performance after the game.
Guardiola never used to do jokes.
At Man City’s peak under Guardiola, or indeed just two seasons ago, Guardiola would have responded furiously to this performance and result. He would not have praised his team’s first-half performance (which was actually very loose, with Fulham going close several times) and he certainly would not have focused on the positives.
Guardiola lacks intensity, dynamism and the fury that made his teams great, therefore it is perfectly natural that Man City should be deficient in the same attributes; should let their minds wander once they are a few goals ahead.
During Man City’s most difficult moments of 2024/25 critics regularly questioned whether Guardiola really had the energy to rebuild another team from scratch. It wasn’t the 5-4 performance itself that gave us the answer but Guardiola’s reaction to it.
And the answer is also there in the tactical adjustments that haven’t been made, in the players that haven’t been signed.
Man City do not have a single right-back or left-back in the squad, which was the locus of the defensive issues at Fulham in particular, but more importantly Guardiola hasn’t quite managed to fuse a more direct style of football with adequate off-the-ball work.
There are no clubs in Europe who play a transitional game - who look to play longer passes forward - who do not also deploy hard pressing. These two ideas go hand-in-hand, because by moving up the field with greater urgency you automatically stretch the pitch lengthways, opening up the possibility of an uncontrolled, end-to-end game unless the counter-press immediately wins back possession.
City don’t have the energy, either physically or psychologically, to press aggressively. It leaves a team too passive to really apply pressure to Arsenal, too defensively fragile to put together the string of victories Guardiola will need to close the gap.
Games like Tuesday’s don’t on their own indicate that Man City cannot win the title. But they reflect an attitude – a weariness, an ennui, a lack of focus – that has hung over the club for well over a year.
It isn’t just an off-season. It’s the beginning of the end of the Pep Guardiola dynasty.
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