LONDON — Four months into the season, it’s not exactly news that Manchester City have reshaped their playing style, with the group stepping up in pursuit of the best version of Erling Haaland. There is a fairly compelling argument that makes sense, one that was not completely refuted in the impressive 5-4 win over Fulham on Tuesday.
For about an hour, Haaland and his teammates decimated Craven Cottage. They were extremely sharp around the penalty area and mercilessly exploited the qualities of their big man, who worked as effectively with his back to goal as he did when he was in a position to shoot. When Jeremy Doku’s shot deflected off Sander Berge and City found themselves 5-1 up, it really should have been that way.
Instead, City held on to win by only a narrow margin, allowing them to hover within two points of leaders Arsenal. The credit for that must undoubtedly go to Fulham, who created enough of a threat to stay in the game early if not for the sloppiness of their back five and a particularly poor night between the crossbars from Bernd Leno. Marco Silva’s strong second-half substitutions signaled a man who could see a way back from the 3-1 hole they found themselves in at the break. He may not have received any points for that initiative, but Silva’s reading of the game was justified.
There was nothing City could do to stop Fulham when they succeeded. Much of that came from stunning long-range strikes, with Alex Iwobi curling a low shot from just outside the area before Samuel Chukwueze went on to drill every loose ball into Gianluigi Donnarumma’s bottom corner. Four goals from 0.9 xG speaks volumes about how brutal this night was. This is the city, though. If there’s any team capable of scoring five goals with a degree of boredom, it’s Pep Guardiola’s side.
One of the hallmarks of their uniqueness is how they squeeze the life out of games. The best iterations would have stifled Fulham before the comeback even began. Even a scaled-down version of the City like this, one might reasonably suspect, would close this down when Chukwueze first took flight and Craven Cottage swung around in a very clumsy manner.
You know the old rules of the game. Four, five minutes of uninterrupted possession, 30 or 40 completed passes as Fulham ran the battle from their legs. They may not have the main wielders of their old dominance – Rodri, Ilkay Gundogan, and Kevin De Bruyne – but logic dictates that the title contender will be able to finish this game off. Instead, City dictated the pace of this match and were forced to play at a relentless pace like a Fulham team determined to achieve a historic equaliser.
It meant chances for a sixth goal, Haaland perhaps scoring twice, but also the feeling that did not subside until the 98th minute that, if they didn’t get another goal they would be the stars of the biggest head loss the Premier League has seen in a decade. There was no way for City to take this game to where they wanted. Between the 70th and 86th minutes, they failed to complete the pass in the attacking third. In the final half-hour, the average number of passes per possession sequence dropped from 7.6 to 4.9. The average possession lasted just 13.2 seconds. This is not how you manage a lead. If he had anything, Guardiola would have pulled his hair out.
“I know you will ask what happened, what happened, and I have no answer,” Guardiola said. “We went too deep defending crosses. We have to occupy space a little better.”
City having less possession of the ball than their opponents is not an old occurrence in a blue moon. However, it was puzzling to see Fulham complete 184 passes in the final half hour of this match compared to City’s 88. This was exactly the situation that required pass after pass.
City wanted to play this way. They couldn’t. Increasingly, this doesn’t seem to be just a coincidence either. Guardiola referred to the nine minutes following Phil Foden’s late win over Leeds, when his team surrendered in an attempt to survive a wave of crosses from the relegation rival. It could also have been a reference to the failed attempts to hit the ball on their way to the equalizer at the Emirates Stadium. There are a lot of matches happening for the city.
However, Guardiola will tell you that all it takes is a change in his and his team’s mentality towards the old ways to thrive again. “We can do it. If people want it, I can do it,” he said. “People forget, but even in the years of 100 points and four Premier League titles in a row, there were games, not like the one today, but there were moments where it was 3-1 or 3-0 and then 3-2 nothing. It’s the Premier League. That’s why it’s so exciting, so unpredictable. You never find out.
“I have the feeling that it is a question, a process for many players to understand how we should play at that moment. For example against Leeds, we scored 3-2, crosses, four corners, three throw-ins, they had chances. We did not control the game after 3-2. We have to do it better.”
What’s strange is that Guardiola seems intent on learning lessons from Leeds. His first substitutions brought in two players who might be a little more effective in controlling the game, Savinho a less powerful winger than Doku and John Stones well versed in the art of keeping the ball. Rayyan Chergui found himself compared to Thiago Alcantara after the match. “They have that quality, they give me the ball, it’s not scary, they keep it. That helps us feel like we have the ball for a long time,” Guardiola said.
City have tried what you would expect them to try, ‘bringing players on the pitch who want the ball a little bit, and who are surrounded by opponents and have the quality to possess it’. It didn’t work. This may be the game where it becomes clear that this team doesn’t want to play the old way anymore. They can’t.
The staff is not there. The technical attrition that began with the ostracization of Joao Cancelo has become more evident this summer with the departures of De Bruyne, Gundogan and Ederson. City were recruited to play the new way, adding Tijani Reynders’ verticality and a pair of rotating shot-stoppers to slot home. Maybe if Rodri came back the way he was Rhodri They will be better able to impose themselves on games. They certainly saw their dominance decline when Nico Gonzalez, the last DM, went off after just over an hour of play.
One midfielder will not be coming at Ballon d’Or level although Guardiola has said Rodri will return “soon”. Meanwhile, as the title race begins to heat up, there is one consistently elite player other than Haaland who can be relied upon. Guardiola knows how it all works. He added: “The English Premier League is very long. I have enough experience to go through a very long journey to try to fight to win the English Premier League.”
“A lot of things happen. We won six Premier League titles. We won four or five titles when we were in December, January and February, four or five points down and we won them. It’s constant, be there and improve. The team that wins the Premier League is the team that grows.”
Growth is what City must do if their new approach is to not provide so many exciting finishes. Maybe something has to change, just as it did in the race for the treble when Guardiola concluded that he would need to switch to a centre-back four to support his team. The city cannot go back to the way things were. Maybe it doesn’t matter. They have a manager who has proven to be more than capable of portraying things as they should be.