Individual mistakes prove fatal as City fall at Barcelona

Pep Guardiola’s first visit to Barcelona with Manchester City was supposed to be something a little different to this. Prior to this fixture – arguably the tie of the group stage – many observers had passed comment on the juxtaposition between the Spaniard’s old club and the task he has been handed in Manchester.

Whilst at Barcelona, he remoulded a flagging side in his own image, one that honoured and progressed the identity that Johann Cruyff had given them; the great Dutchman had a significant influence on Guardiola during the time they spent together at the Nou Camp. City would like Pep to forge the club in his own image in much the same way Cruyff did with the Catalan giants. The narrative strands running through this tie were too sumptuous to ignore. Could the manager’s new men match his old charges? It was meant to be a titanic clash – “The best game in the world” as one Spanish newspaper boldly proclaimed it to be.

So, on City’s third visit to Barcelona in four seasons, how did they end up posting their worst result there yet? Post-match headlines and inquisitions following the 4-0 defeat will undoubtedly start with the manager’s decision to leave out Sergio Agüero; it’s a choice that is fair game for debate, but it would be misleading to paint it as the key reason for the heavy loss.

Instead, you have to focus on a raft of individual mistakes that cost City dearly in a match that, for a long period, they actually looked like they could get a positive result from. In fact, the first chance of the game fell City’s way when Raheem Sterling played a ball into an acre of space in the box but Kevin De Bruyne’s run was badly timed and the move came to nothing.

City equipped themselves well in the opening 15 minutes. Whilst they didn’t create any clear cut chances, they established a foothold on which to build; they did not look overawed and there were no signs of the triumvirate of Messi, Neymar and Suarez tearing into the defence. But then, in the 17th minute, the first mistake came. The Blues appeared to have dealt easily with a Messi foray into the penalty area and all it required was Fernandinho clearance. The Brazilian’s studs decided not to comply and as he slipped in the box, the space opened up for Messi to round City ‘keeper Claudio Bravo – himself making a return to his old club – and slot it into the net.

As the first half wore on, City looked unruffled. One unfortunate slip had seen them fall behind but they were undeterred in their desire to contain the home side, press high and threaten down the wings. John Stones ought to have done much better with a header and Ilkay Gündogan drew a smart save from Marc-André Ter Stegen. There seemed little for the visitors to fear and every reason for confidence that they would find an equaliser if the game became stretched in the second half.

In the opening minutes of the second period, City twice freed De Bruyne down the right, only for the ball into the box to not be up to scratch. It would be tempting to lament how Agüero probably would have been in a good position in the box had he been selected, but with had the Argentine been there, the shape of the team and patterns of play would have been different; maybe the chances out wide wouldn’t have existed.

The lack of Agüero certainly couldn’t be blamed for what happened next. Claudio Bravo decided to make City’s task 100 times harder by coming out of his box and fluffing his lines, passing straight to Luis Suarez. As the Uruguayan sent the ball over Bravo’s head, he stuck his arms up and handled outside of his box. The only possible outcome was a red card; City were down to 10 men.

In the 61st minute, De Bruyne gave the ball away before it landed at the feet of Messi – he promptly tucked the ball in the bottom corner from just outside the box. He grabbed his hat-trick in the 69th minute following a poor back-pass from Gündogan. Willy Cabellero did save a Neymar penalty, but the Brazilian scored anyway in the 89th minute with a brilliant individual goal.

So, what did we learn about Pep Guardiola and his Manchester City side? We saw, for the most part, that as a team they are capable of matching up to the best. We saw that, tactically, they were able to implement the manager’s plans against an elite side. However, we also saw that when it came to it, too many individual errors created a humiliating scoreline.

Can you coach a player to not fall over? Can you teach a goalkeeper not to lose his head and handle the ball yards outside of the box when a dismissal is the only feasible consequence? Even for the greatest coach in the world – and Guardiola still is that – rooting out the mindset that allows so many fatal errors in one game is a tough one. It would be easy to write these mistakes off as one-time-could-happen-to-anybody type errors, except there were four of them and they all happened to City.

The uneasy fact is that the early-season momentum has now been halted by four games without a victory. With an in-form Southampton visiting the Etihad on Sunday, followed by the short journey to Manchester United next week, they can’t afford for this run to stretch any further.