Aston Villa v Man City: Wounded champions seek solutions to crisis
One of football’s best worn cliches is no matter how bad things might seem, there is always someone worse off than yourself.
You just never expect it to be Manchester City.
Since the start of last month, the four-time defending Premier League champions have, statistically speaking, been the worst performing team in the division.
Even Southampton have picked up more points-per-game than Pep Guardiola’s team, who have lost eight of their last 11 matches in all competitions. To think there was talk of City being in trouble when they arrived at Villa Park last December winless in three Premier League matches.
Defeat that night extended the run to four but after that City dropped only eight more points the rest of the season as they surged down the stretch to another title, as they so often do.
Perhaps this time they have already left themselves too steep a mountain to climb but the expectation is at some point Guardiola will find the solutions to pull his team out of the slump. He is simply too good a head coach not to, while the talent at his disposal remains considerable even considering the loss of key players to injury, most notably the world’s best player in Rodri. The January transfer window is just around the corner.
That said, this still comfortably represents the toughest period and test of the Catalan’s managerial career. There is a mental fragility around City we have rarely seen before in Guardiola’s era, their late collapse to lose last Sunday’s Manchester derby being the starkest evidence. For so many years the standard setters, they currently look like any other team.
They will head to Villa seeking a result to restore confidence. The challenge for Unai Emery’s hosts is to ensure City’s crisis extends for another few days at least.
