For the first time on the Manchester City Manifesto, we begin in a sombre mood. The 3-2 loss to Norwich City was just two days ago, and it’s hard to explain away what happened. A team can do months worth of planning, years worth of installing a system; and have it all undone by the individual mistakes of those trusted to execute.
Norwich City 3-2 Manchester City
It was individual mistakes that cost Manchester City more than anything in their first loss of the season. But Norwich’s style of play was a huge factor in forcing those mistakes. The first mistake came from Ederson. As Lee Dixon rightly pointed out on commentary, Ederson was too central for the first goal. If you’re going to have a clean goalline on corners, you as a goalie need to be there to cover the near post.
Especially in a Manchester City team that has never been that great at winning headers. Ederson cannot get beaten at the near post like that. He has not had a great start to the season. His errors hadn’t cost the team yet, but he has made a few positioning mistakes in the last six months or so. Something to keep an eye on in the future.
The other mistakes were made by each of the centre-backs. First John Stones made a terrible decision to step up on a counter, which left Kyle Walker defending 2v1 for Norwich’s second goal. And we don’t even need to get started on Nicolas Otamendi being overrun while seemingly still on his flight back from the U.S. on the third.
Individual Mistakes
Pep Guardiola and his coaches will have a tough time taking anything away from this game. It is hard for a coach to improve upon mistakes so egregious. He can tell Otamendi to think quicker till he is City blue in the face. Only Ederson, Stones and Otamendi can make up for their game costing errors themselves.
There is a fascinating dichotomy between system and talent that exists in these mistakes. Guardiola’s system is built to take calculated risks. Playing out from the back, possession of the ball, pressing the backline; it is a system predicated on the rewards of risky play.
It’s inherent in the system that some of those risks are going to fail. But three mistakes in crucial situations is hard for any system to account for.
Champions League
Manchester City is hoping to put the bad taste in their mouth behind them as they travel to Ukraine for UEFA Champions League action. There are no real surprises in the travelling squad. An away game at Shakhtar Donetsk is a good time for some of the players on the squad fringes to get a start.
Joao Cancelo should find himself in the starting lineup, so too Fernandinho. It’s easy to see them being half of a back four filled out by Otamendi and Oleksandr Zinchenko. Ahead of the back four; Riyad Mahrez, Gabriel Jesus and Kevin De Bruyne should all be in line to start after coming off the bench Saturday.
It should be a comfortable game for City, but then again it was easy to think the same about Norwich. However, after a result like the game against Norwich, you fear for what the Donetsk players are in for.
Manchester City Women
The Manchester City Women’s team got their third win in three games to start the season, this time beating Reading 2-0. After a 7-1 thrashing of Lugano in the UEFA Women’s Champions League, the girls didn’t miss a beat in WSL action.
The star of both games had to be Pauline Bremer. She got in on the act for two of the seven goals the Cityzens put past Lugano last week. And she got the only two goals in the win over Reading. After not featuring against Manchester United it was quite the week for the German!
But the biggest news for the women this week came on the injury front. After scoring the first goal against Lugano, Georgia Stanway exited the game with a hamstring injury. Tests have confirmed that she will be out for six weeks with that injury. It sounds like a big deal as City need her goalscoring. But if Pauline Bremer is going to keep scoring like this they might be just fine.
Manchester City EDS
Finally, the EDS team had another poor performance. After a win that everyone thought would steady the ship, things seem to be rocking after a 2-1 home loss to Wolves. Paul Harsley has some tough questions to answer after the defence has thrown away three leads in four games already this season.
This is a new crop of EDS players, much of the previous squads have graduated or moved on. So maybe the new young players are taking time to settle in. But this has still not been good enough. They will need to play a lot better in Ukraine against Shakhtar if they are going to contend at the level they expect too.
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