Masterplan going wrong for Manchester City and Manuel PellegriniCity are being outplayed and outthought in the Champions League and desperately need a domestic win at QPR to help stop their drifting ship running aground• Match report: Manchester City 1-2 CSKA Moscow
• City’s ceiling crashes in after another European failure
There may be lies, damn lies and statistics but unfortunately for Manchester City there are also the statistics that do not lie and make damning reading. Such as this one.
The English champions have played six matches since last winning a Champions League game, and since the victory against Bayern Munich in the final round of last season’s group stage, they have failed to keep a clean sheet and collected four red cards – five, if you count the touchline banishment that saw Manuel Pellegrini watching the opening of this season’s campaign from the stands.
The City manager must have wished he was back there against CSKA Moscow on Wednesday instead of close enough to the action to feel a part of his side’s latest European flop. Pellegrini was honest in the aftermath because he had to be. The referee did not get all his decisions right but he was not the reason City lost. The reason City lost, as Leonid Slutsky, CSKA’s manager, and a couple of his players took delight in explaining, was because City are still naive against European opponents who set themselves up to play on the counter. “We had a gameplan, to play counterattacking football, and it worked very well,” Slutsky said. “We had chances in both halves of the game.”
Indeed they did and even had City kept 11 men on the pitch they would still have been outplayed and outthought. The late dismissals, arguably, were the result of pent-up frustration at being unable to gain a toehold in the game, let alone exert enough leverage to force a result. City have problems all over the pitch but they tend not to show up in domestic games, where few opponents play them for suckers as elegantly as the best Champions League sides are able to do.
CSKA are not even among the very best Champions League sides but they know the drill. City tend to defend with a high line anyway. When they knew they had to obtain a result, their natural inclination to get people forward and press their opponents was even more pronounced. All CSKA had to do was cope with the pressure then use the ball quickly and intelligently when it came their way, in the knowledge their quick attackers would always be able to find space behind the City defence.
That was how the Moscow side found their chances, with the pace of Seydou Doumbia and the cleverness of his support players causing City problems, if not their goals. The fact the goals arrived through City mistakes, Gaël Clichy and Yaya Touré contributing to the first, Clichy practically claiming an assist in the second, merely underlined the lack of concentration and professionalism that typified City’s performance.
Touré managing to pick up a straight red card which will put him out of the next two games was what really summed up City’s inadequacy and the fact the midfielder was so quick to issue a Twitter apology suggests he knows he ought to have been better than that.
The City thinking behind bringing Touré from Barcelona in the first place was to import a proven winner. The presence within the squad of an elite player from a top European side who had already won the Champions League would have a two-fold effect, it was thought. Other leading players would be attracted to the club, on seeing City meant business and were looking to sign the best, while players already at the club could not fail to have their spirits lifted and their expectations raised by the arrival of someone who could have gone almost anywhere in the world but chose Manchester.
It is not all Touré’s fault, far from it, but the plan has yet to work out as originally envisaged. His commanding performances in the league have helped City win two titles, albeit narrowly on both occasions, even if his workrate and defensive contribution have sometimes been questioned. In Europe, neither he nor the players around him have been able to push on to the required level.
City are no savvier or slicker in the Champions League now than they were when they started. They may even have gone backwards, at a time when Europe’s leading lights are pushing on to new heights. Bayern Munich beat Roma 7-1 in Italy, the same Roma who won their opening game against CSKA 5-1. Stranger things have happened than City winning their final two games to qualify from their present unpromising position but already looking so far ahead seems an irrelevance.
Pellegrini, who as recently as last week said his team could go all the way in the Champions League if only qualification could be attained, is under pressure to explain why things are going so wrong. Asked about City’s chances of winning their next two Champions League games, on Wednesday Pellegrini replied the most important one to win was this Saturday, against Queens Park Rangers. That answer was not quite as flip as it might have sounded.
Should City’s confidence slump carry over into the league, so that home points are dropped against relegation strugglers, Pellegrini’s future at the club would come under the closest scrutiny. If a lack of visible progress was what counted against Mark Hughes and Roberto Mancini, Pellegrini is currently banging his head against the same wall.
David Silva’s absence through injury has not helped the situation, for without him City lack an ideas man. Touré’s energy and determination can sometimes save the day, but while Sergio Agüero is a splendid finisher and muscular penalty box presence, he cannot be rated with Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo without the knack of coming up with something unexpected to change the course of a contest. He is not quite a game-breaker yet, and neither is Edin Dzeko, Stevan Jovetic, James Milner or Jesús Navas.
Decent players all but not sources of inspiration. That is a worry for Pellegrini, who had the chance to replace Álvaro Negredo in summer but chose not to, and so is his defence, where Eliaquim Mangala, the most expensive defender in England, no less, is unable to get a game. With Bacary Sagna also unused on the bench against CSKA, Samir Nasri an ineffective half-time substitute and Fernandinho, who also came on at half-time, taking 24 minutes to collect two bookings, problems are mounting for Pellegrini, along with the charge he has not spent the largesse at his disposal wisely.
City managers, in particular, live in dread of that accusation. Pellegrini bought well when he came to the club, less well, it seems, when he was ensconced as manager of a title-winning side. It might be only QPR on Saturday but Pellegrini is right. Suddenly the result is vital.
