Around 36 hours before Omar Marmoush was announced as Manchester City’s third signing in four days, the case for him had never seemed stronger. There was more than one dramatic comeback in the Champions League this week and, as they prepared for what proved a shellacking at Paris Saint-Germain, City may have noted the scoreline from Spain: Atletico Madrid 2-1 Bayer Leverkusen, with both of the victors’ goals by Julian Alvarez.

They took his tally to 16 goals for the season, nine in his last 12 outings. Pep Guardiola has a policy of letting players leave if they want to and Atletico’s £82m offer was persuasive, but the Argentinian was a favourite of the City manager. He left a void that Marmoush will be charged with filling, of being a Swiss army knife of an attacking option: starter and substitute, striker and No 10 and player who can come inside from a starting berth on the sides, a sidekick for Erling Haaland or a deputy for him. Full of pace and goals, Marmoush may be better equipped than Alvarez for the job of a quasi-winger; that never suited the World Cup winner, but his work rate was such that Guardiola even employed him as a No 8 on occasion.

At Atletico, Alvarez can have a centrality. At City, he ranked as a deluxe member of the supporting cast. And if Marmoush’s £59m fee, given the Argentinian was a £14m bargain, may render him still more of one, Alvarez’s exit left a void that City seemed strangely reluctant to fill in the summer and which they have only belatedly, and expensively addressed. For swathes of the season, their second top scorer has been Josko Gvardiol: a buccaneering left-back, but essentially a converted centre-back. When the goals dried up for many of City’s midfielders, they missed Alvarez more. Even as Haaland has tried to share the blame for their slide, Guardiola has demurred. The Norwegian scored his 23rd goal of the season in Paris. His manager has tended to point out they would be rather worse off without his considerable contribution.

And yet, as Guardiola surveyed the wreckage left by a disastrous night at the Parc des Princes, he kept coming back to one tactical issue. City were outnumbered in midfield, he felt, because PSG deployed a false nine. It used to be Guardiola’s signature move but his old Barcelona teammate Luis Enrique borrowed it and beat him. Even as City may be solving one problem, others were very apparent.

Which can be the way of things in a season when issues have multiplied, when there can be an odd disinclination to tackle some. The player City missed most in Paris was not Alvarez but Rodri: that has tended to be the case this season. PSG fielded three central midfielders in their twenties, City three in their thirties. The old-timers were blown away. City could not get the ball, let alone keep it. When Kevin de Bruyne and Mateo Kovacic trudged off with the air of men who were living through their own deaths, Guardiola sent on the still less mobile, still older Ilkay Gundogan.

City have made three signings this window and none is a central midfielder. There may not be one, though there is interest in loaning Douglas Luiz, and there are others under consideration. There are grounds to accelerate their interest. Guardiola’s belief Kovacic is a defensive midfielder is not borne out by the evidence this season. City seem to have none.

Meanwhile, the reasons for recruiting two young centre-backs may have grown during the game. Ruben Dias, the youngest of City’s injury-prone quartet, had to go off at half-time. The lesser-spotted John Stones returned as a substitute and City had conceded from a free kick within seconds. The pace of Abdukodir Khusanov may be welcome in a team desperately short of speed but he has played a mere 31 games for Lens, the teenager Vitor Reis just 22 for Palmeiras in his senior career. It may be asking too much of rookies to add assurance and organisation to this bedraggled defence.

But, even as City have added central defenders, Wednesday highlighted the glaring shortcomings in the full-back positions. Rico Lewis came on at left-back in the half-time reshuffle caused by Dias’ departure. He was tormented by Ousmane Dembele. Unsurprisingly, too, given that Lewis is a technician who can excel when City have the ball, but his physical shortcomings render him a weak defensive full-back. On the other flank, meanwhile, Matheus Nunes isn’t a full-back at all, but a £50m misfit of a midfielder who had a torrid time against Bradley Barcola. Nunes has been pressganged into duty as a makeshift replacement for Kyle Walker – perhaps as he has more athletic prowess than Walker – but, unless Khusanov or Reis is given a role on the flank, this was proof they need a right-back.

The eventual verdict may be that a week that contained the low of City dropping to 25th in the Champions League brought the seeds of a revival. Certainly Marmoush arrives with a momentum many of his new teammates lack. Director of football Txiki Begiristain cited his “outstanding pace”, which is something few of them can boast. If he is at the peak of his powers, the same cannot be said for them; but then, when they were winning the Champions League in 2023, he was joining Eintracht Frankfurt on a free transfer from Wolfsburg. His fortunes have changed dramatically; City’s too. But while they have the replacement they wanted for Alvarez, their rebuilding job remains far bigger than just Marmoush.