LONDON — Four months into the season it is not exactly news that Manchester City have reconfigured their playing style, the collective sublimated in pursuit of the best version of Erling Haaland. There is a pretty compelling argument that it makes sense, one that was not entirely disproven in Tuesday’s remarkable 5-4 win over Fulham.
For nearly an hour, Haaland and his running mates obliterated Craven Cottage. They were razor sharp around the penalty area and ruthlessly exploited the qualities of their big man, who functioned as effectively with his back to goal as he did when he was in position to take a shot. When Jeremy Doku’s bending shot flicked in off Sander Berge and City found themselves 5-1 up, that really should have been that.
Instead, it was only by the finest margins that City clung on to a win that allowed them to stagger within two points of leaders Arsenal. Credit for that doubtless goes to Fulham, who had created enough threat to stay in the game early on if it hadn’t been for the sloppiness of their back five and a particularly off night between the sticks from Bernd Leno. Aggressive substitutions at the break for Marco Silva suggested a man who could see a way back from the 3-1 hole they found themselves in at the interval. He may not have got any points to reward that initiative, but Silva’s reading of the game was vindicated.
There was nothing City could do to stop Fulham when they got their tails up. Much of that came from spectacular long range efforts, Alex Iwobi rolling in a low shot from just outside the area before Samuel Chukwueze started rocketing every loose ball into Gianluigi Donnarumma’s bottom corner. Four goals from 0.9 xG speaks to just how wild this night was. This is City, though. If any team should be able to imbue five goals with a degree of tedium, it’s Pep Guardiola’s perma-champions.
A defining trait of their excellence has been how they throttle the life out of games. The best iterations would have throttled Fulham before the comeback even got going. Even a diminished version of City like this one would, one might reasonably suspect, shut this down when Chukwueze let fly for the first time and Craven Cottage got rocking in an extremely unFulhamish way.
You know the old playbook. Four, five minute runs of unbroken possession, 30 or 40 passes completed as Fulham ran the fight out of their legs. They might not have the prime practitioners of their old dominance — prime Rodri, Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin De Bruyne — but logic would dictate that a title contender would be able to shut this game down. Instead City had the tempo of this game inflicted upon them and were forced to play at the relentless pace of a Fulham side hell bent on an historic equalizer.
That meant openings for a sixth, twice Haaland might have scored, but also a sense that didn’t ease until the 98th minute, if they didn’t get another they would be the stars of the greatest head loss the Premier League has seen in a decade. There was no way for City to move this game where they wanted to. Between the 70th and 86th minute they failed to complete a pass in the attacking third. In that final half hour the average number of passes per possession sequence cratered from 7.6 to 4.9. An average possession lasted just 13.2 seconds. This is not how you manage a lead. If only he had any, Guardiola would have been pulling his hair out.
“I know you’re going to ask what happened, what happened, what happened, and I don’t have an answer,” Guardiola said. “We went so deep to defend the crosses. We have to occupy the spaces a bit better.”
City having less of the ball than their opponents is not the once in a blue moon event of old. Still, it was baffling to see Fulham complete 184 passes in the final half hour of this game to City’s 88. This was exactly the sort of situation that called for pass upon pass.
City wanted to play that way. They just couldn’t. Increasingly it does not look like that is a fluke either. Guardiola noted the nine minutes after Phil Foden’s late winner against Leeds, when his side hunkered down in an attempt to survive the wave of crosses from a relegation contender. He could also have made reference to the failed attempts to sufferball their way to a draw at the Emirates. Too many games are happening to City.
And yet Guardiola would tell you that all it takes is a change of his mindset and that of his team for the old ways to prosper once more. “We can do it, if the people want it then I can do it,” he said. “People forget but even in the years of 100 points and four Premier Leagues in a row there were games, not like that game today, but there were moments where 3-1 or 3-0 and then 3-2 in nothing. It’s the Premier League. That’s why it’s so exciting, so unpredictable. You never can figure it out.
“I have a feeling it’s a question, a process for many players to understand how we have to play that moment. For example against Leeds we scored for 3-2,.., they crossed, four corners, three throw-ins, they had chances. We didn’t control the game after 3-2. We have to do it better.”
The curious thing is that it seemed Guardiola was intent on learning the lessons from Leeds. His first substitutions brought on two players who might be a little more effective at the controlling game, Savinho a less pull the trigger winger than Doku and John Stones well versed in the arts of keep ball. Rayan Cherki found himself compared with Thiago Alcantara after the game. “They have that quality,” said Guardiola, “give me the ball, no scary, and they keep it. That helps us to feel long possessions.”
City tried what you would expect them to try, “bring players in the pitch who want the ball a little bit, who surrounded by opponents have the quality to have it.” It did not work. Perhaps this is the game where it becomes apparent that it isn’t that this team don’t want to play the old way anymore. They can’t.
The personnel just aren’t there. The drain of technicians that began with the ostracizing of Joao Cancelo only became more pronounced this summer with departures such as De Bruyne, Gundogan and Ederson. City recruited to play the new way, adding the verticality of Tijani Reijnders and a pair of vertiginous shot stoppers to go in net. Maybe if Rodri came back as Rodri they would be more able to impose themselves on games. They certainly saw their control ebb away when Nico Gonzalez, the last DM standing, came off with just over an hour played.
A Ballon d’Or-level one-man midfield is not coming over the hill though even if Guardiola says Rodri will be back “soon.” In the meantime, as the title race begins to heat up, there is one consistently elite performer aside from Haaland who can be relied upon. Guardiola knows how all this works. “The Premier League is so long… I have experience enough to make a long, long run to try to fight to win the Premier League.
“Many things happen. We won six Premier Leagues. Four or five we won when in December, January, February, we were four or five points behind and won it. It’s consistent, be there and improve. The team who wins the Premier League is the team who grows.”
Grow is what City must do if their new approach is to be one that doesn’t deliver quite so many dramatic finishes. Something might have to change, just as it did in the run to the treble when Guardiola concluded that he’d need to switch to four center backs to shore up his side. City cannot go back to how things were. Perhaps that doesn’t matter. They have a manager who has proven himself more than capable of imaging and delivering how things ought to be.
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