What Savinho and Ruben Dias did in FA Cup shows sobering Man City truth
Are you watching, Real Madrid?
Hopefully not from a Manchester City perspective because terrestrial television on Saturday lunchtime showed the Premier League champions struggle badly against a team from the third division. A 2-1 comeback win puts them in the hat for the next round, but nobody will fear playing them - least of all the kings of the Champions League.
City fans have seen it all yet these are chastening times for Pep Guardiola and his serial winners, whose descent from the heights they hit has been rough and shows no sign of stopping. Nobody had Leyton Orient fans singing that Guardiola would be sacked on their Blues bingo card at the start of the season, and certainly not in the context of them being far from the first fanbase to air it.
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Welcome to 2024/25 City though, where one step forward is usually accompanied by at least two back. They eventually got the job done, but the pattern of setbacks continued.
Abdukodir Khusanov endured a start to forget against Chelsea a few weeks ago and here it was arguably even worse for Nico Gonzalez, the £50m midfielder signed on deadline day to take over Rodri's role for the rest of the season. Brushed off the ball too easily in the 16th minute as Jamie Donley brilliantly pulled off an audacious lob over Stefan Ortega that hit the bar and bounced into the net off the goalkeeper, the former Porto man didn't even have the chance to redeem himself as he limped off shortly afterwards with injury.
It wasn't much better for Vitor Reis, with the Brazilian targeted during a difficult 45 minutes before he was replaced by Khusanov. With Erling Haaland given the day off, £59m arrival Omar Marmoush must have wondered how he had gone from banging in goals in the Bundesliga every week to struggling at Brisbane Road.
Khusanov, having recovered from his false start against Chelsea, got City level in the second half when Rico Lewis's shot smacked in off his face rather more forcefully than he had managed on debut and past a stranded Keeley in goal. Once again, whatever happened at half-time had worked.
City have of course been in these positions before. They went 2-0 down to Swansea in 2019 when they won the FA Cup and every other domestic competition, and trailed Cheltenham Town until the final minutes in 2021 when an almighty unbeaten run saw them win the league and reach their first Champions League final.
Guardiola always picks strong teams and they always come through, with the 8-0 win over Salford besting Arsene Wenger's Arsenal to set a new top-flight record of 17 FA Cup matches won against lower-league opposition. They did so here again, thanks to substitute Kevin De Bruyne latching onto a chipped ball over the top from Jack Grealish.
Whatever strength was shown to come back was not enough to hide the weaknesses though. The fight is still there, and Savinho tried to whip up the away end after the equaliser to spur them on, but City do not look capable currently of taking advantage of situations whoever the opposition is; not for the first team, City scored and then were pinned back by opponents who then looked more likely to score and Ruben Dias spent a decent amount of his time on the pitch with his arms up in the air in frustration at his teammates.
If Guardiola was looking for positive to take into the Champions League play-off, he didn't find many. If he was looking for players from the match to take into the starting XI, he didn't find many of them either as the competition for places still isn't anywhere near it needs to be.
You can blame the many miscommunications and hesitations on the ball on the fact this team have not played together much, yet it still feels like City have just lost the confidence and aura that they used to carry all around the world with them. Real Madrid entered a bearpit when they stepped out at the Etihad in 2023; on Tuesday the Blues will do well to avoid another mauling.
