Sometimes the only explanation that makes sense is that football is governed not by the laws of physics, by data and xG and logic, but that it is in fact a malevolent deity, capricious and mischievous and that sometimes it turns on you and there’s really not much that can be done.
The Manchester derby had been a largely dreadful game between two tentative sides, lacking confidence and conviction, poking and prodding and giving very little indication they’ve been the two most successful clubs over the history of the Premier League. But City had had all three of the shots on target in the first half and, in that sense, were worth the lead given them when Joško Gvardiol headed in Kevin De Bruyne’s deflected cross, a goal that would have seemed freakish had it not been the eighth United have conceded from a corner this season, and the fourth under Ruben Amorim.
But in the second half, United tried to play, without looking especially good at it; City did not. They froze. United kept going, although Amad Diallo was the only player who seemed remotely dangerous. Even then, everything suggested it would be a scruffy 1-0 City win that would have lifted them to within six points of the leaders Liverpool and perhaps restored morale.
But then Matheus Nunes left a backpass short, allowing Diallo to nip in, before compounding the error with a reckless attempt to regain possession and conceding a penalty. Bruno Fernandes, after what was surely his worst game in a United shirt, converted the penalty. Nunes had initially been deployed at left-back as part of a Guardiola rejig, some attempt to discover a new combination that might restore a sense of calm. It was a selection to recall some of Guardiola’s weirder decisions before big European games, but if he’s overthinking matches against this United team he really is doomed.
Once one United goal had gone in, there was a curious inevitability about the second: a long punt, a simple diagonal run from Diallo between two centre-backs who were far too far apart, a stretching first touch past Ederson and then a volleyed finish of immaculate cruelty, trickling gently between Gvardiol’s legs. None of it was explicable: but some distant spirit has decided that Guardiola must suffer, that after so many years of unparalleled success, of coldly rational juego de posición, he must experience, in one concentrated draft, the sense of helplessness familiar to most managers.
On 29 October, Erik ten Hag was sacked as manager of Manchester United. The next day, City lost at Tottenham in the Carabao Cup – a night whose dark significance was underlined by the fact that Timo Werner scored. Since Ten Hag went, City have lost eight of 11 and beaten only Nottingham Forest; imagine where they’d be if Jim Ratcliffe had actually been decisive enough to replace him in the summer.
And so we have a Premier League in which, with Liverpool and Arsenal both stuttering over the weekend, it’s Chelsea – chaotic Chelsea, with their preposterous distended squad, treading a PSR tightrope – who look the relentless winners, a plot twist that nobody saw coming. It’s one of those seasons that offers a reminder of just how hard it is, even with the financial advantages the elite enjoy, to dominate as City – and to a lesser extent Arsenal and Liverpool – have in recent years. The Premier League’s middle class, not just Aston Villa and Tottenham but the likes of Brighton and Bournemouth, Nottingham Forest and Brentford, is of extremely high quality. Suddenly, fascinatingly, every game seems fraught with possibility – as it should be.
But the focus remains on City because the meltdown is so spectacular, so unanticipated. Legs and heart have gone as one. It’s like sitting in Rome in 410 and watching the Visigoths pour over the horizon, an empire collapsing in real time. If this can perish, as St Jerome wrote then, what can be ever safe? City will, at some point, start winning again, but the damage is done and the aura may never return.
Their immediate fixture list would not normally appear overly taxing: Villa away, Everton home, Leicester away, West Ham home. But Villa, out of sorts as they have been of late, outplayed City in the equivalent fixture last season – a game that may in time be seen as an early indication the days of the Guardiola hegemony were numbered – and besides, City right now look capable of losing to anybody.
Could Guardiola go? It’s a preposterous thought given how much he has won, how centred on him the City project is, but managers tend not to recover from runs like this – Jürgen Klopp with three wins in a run of 14 league games in 2020-21, the Covid season, is perhaps the only comparable counter-example. Guardiola seemed baffled afterwards. All things, as he has taken to reciting recently, shall pass. Including the imperial phase of his Manchester City.
There may not even be much of a reason for it; just that football has decreed it must be so.
On this day
However chaotic things have been for Manchester United over the past decade, they are not as bad as they were on 16 December 1972 when they produced probably their worst performance since the second world war when, third-bottom of the First Division, they lost 5-0 away to Crystal Palace, who had been bottom. The decline after winning the European Cup in 1968 had been steep. Matt Busby had retired in 1969 but lingered as a general manager, undermining first Wilf McGuinness and then Frank O’Farrell.
1972-73 began badly then, in November, George Best, whose behaviour had been deteriorating, was charged with slapping a woman in a club – he was subsequently convicted. O’Farrell fined him £200 and suspended him. Best went on a bender to London, failed to show at a meeting with directors to discuss his conduct and was transfer-listed. But then Busby offered him yet another second chance. The players, sick of his antics, were appalled, and, as Reg Drury wrote in the News of the World, “surrendered as meekly as their directors had done in the confrontation with George Best”. The following week, O’Farrell and Best were sacked – although there would be further reprieves for Best.
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This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email [email protected], and he’ll answer the best in a future edition
