How Man City lost their ‘fear factor’: ‘careless’ duels, counter-attacks and mental issues

Ilkay Gundogan questioned Manchester City’s mentality after they slumped to a seventh defeat in 10 games and effectively ended their chances of finishing in the top eight in the Champions League.

The 2-0 defeat by Juventus means that City will at best probably face a two-legged play-off at best, and yet more demanding fixtures, although they are in danger of crashing out of European competition completely.

Asked about City’s apparent lack of confidence, with just one win in that sequence of games, Gundogan said that teams did not have to “do that much” to score against them.

The midfielder added that a lack of confidence “is a big part of it” and added: “Obviously that’s a mental issue as well. You can see that. We sometimes, one action we miss the ball, lose a duel and you see that we drop immediately, lose the rhythm, they are able to break our rhythm with the easiest of things. They don’t even need to do much.

“You have to do the simple things as good as possible. Work hard again, this is how you get confidence back, even in the game if you miss something, by doing small and simple things you get confidence back. At the moment we are always doing the wrong things.

“I feel like we know exactly what’s going wrong. If you look at the most part of games, even today, we actually didn’t play bad, created chances, just missed to score, in these kind of games if you give away once chance it’s not easy to bounce back.

“We know what’s going wrong, it’s just finding the switch to turn things around because even though we are not getting results, it doesn’t feel like we are far off.

“As long as we don’t find that click, it’s going to be tough. Every single player needs to question themselves, to do better, how the player can individually sacrifice more to contribute to the team so we can get collectively back on our way.”

Once again City, who have conceded 23 times in their last 10 matches, appear to give away goals cheaply with simple mistakes. “At the moment it feels like every attack we concede is just so dangerous,” Gundogan said. “I don’t know, I have a feeling sometimes we are a bit careless with duels, instead of playing simple we overcomplicate things, and we missed the right timing to release the ball. Just lose the ball and give them counter-attacks.

“We are built for possession, keep the ball, be strong, if you can’t do anything don’t lose it. At the moment it’s not working out for us.”

Guardiola: ‘Of course I question myself’

Pep Guardiola disputed Gundogan’s analysis. “I am not agreeing with Ilkay, of course it is tough, except one or two games in this period that were not good, the rest we played good,” the City manager said.

He added that he questions himself. “Of course. I have my thoughts,” he said. “We play really good. You say what happened in the results. What happened today we played good. Of course I question myself. I’m stable in good moments, bad moments.

“I’m incredibly honest, if we play good we play good. Always the game will save us. We can do it, today we concede few chances.”

Guardiola rejected the idea that he was facing the biggest challenge of his career with City’s current crisis.

“My biggest challenge is to get results to continue to work in the first seasons. It’s life, it happens, sometimes you have a bad period. I’m going to insist until we’re there,” he said, adding that the aim now was to qualify for the play-offs. “It’s the target, we need one point, three points. Go to Paris [to face PSG in January] to try to do it and the last game at home [against Club Brugge].”

City have ‘lost their fear factor’

Rio Ferdinand claimed no one is scared of City any more and no great team had lost the ability to inspire “fear” in their opponents as quickly as they have.

Former Manchester United captain Ferdinand also said he had not seen any Guardiola side “ever be this bad” after watching them crash to their latest defeat.

Ferdinand’s fellow TNT Sports pundit Joleon Lescott claimed City’s opponents had lost the “fear factor” when playing the defending Premier League champions.

Former City defender Lescott said: “We all talk about the confidence of City, but they’re also losing the fear factor from the opposition, and that’s a big thing. When Rio played for United, you went there and you were in fear. If they went in front, you were in fear. But then, all of a sudden, when that goes, it just breeds confidence to the opposition.”

Ferdinand added: “You’ve never seen it go out of a team so quick. The dominant teams, like the Chelseas and the Arsenals or even the teams that I played in or before me, I don’t think the dominance was kind of zapped out of the team and that fear factor was taken out immediately like this. This is like in a seven or eight-game spell.

“A team that’s been so dominant, it’s so surprising to see that change so quickly.”

Ferdinand had earlier said: “We just haven’t seen a Pep Guardiola side – forget Man City – a Pep Guardiola side in general ever be this bad. And he’s got to find a way of galvanising this team and reinstalling some form and confidence.

“And I think it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, this is a stark reminder to any young footballer or any players that play football, anyone can lose confidence and it really, really hurt performance, and it really hurt form, and really hurt outcomes in terms of games and winning games.”

‘Turnovers are killing them’

He added: “For City, there’s a lot of work to be done behind the scenes now. They’ve never been here and you’re going to find out about a lot of the players here. Because it’s a nice ride to be on, it’s a nice journey to be on, when you’re winning. When it’s not going well, who is going to help you get back on the straight and narrow, back to normality? Pep will learn a lot about his players in this period.”

Juventus became the latest team to ruthlessly punish City when winning possession.

Ferdinand said: “Turnovers are killing them massively. As soon as they turn the ball over, they look vulnerable. Teams are slicing through them, running off players. There are big holes and big, big spaces on the pitch for teams to exploit. And they’re getting punished. And that’s a big key as well.”

Lescott added: “City need to find an alternative to scoring the perfect goal and it looking slick and it being a great pass and a great touch and a great finish. Maybe just create some uncertainty in the opposition that leads to a tap-in.”

City’s defeat puts them in real danger of being dumped out of the Champions League before the knockout phase, amid their worst run of results for almost two decades.

It comes after they became the first club to be crowned champions of England in four successive seasons. Ferdinand said of their fans: “They’ve been able to gloat and they’ve been able to take the mickey out of people. They’re going to be the butt of a few jokes now and they’re going to have to take it on the chin.”