Man City’s latest implosion shows flaws of Pep Guardiola's once-suffocating champions | OneFootball

Man City collapsed against Real Madrid and handle leads like bars of butter-coated soap

Do you remember what it used to be like playing against Manchester City? A team that kept the ball like no other and schemed wave after wave of relentless attack, drew an arced perimeter around your box and sealed off every escape.

So, how did they go from that, to this? From a team that held games and opponents in the meanest of grips to one that handles both like bars of butter-coated soap?

With still a third of the season to go, it is now 10 times this term that City have lost leads. Two seasons ago, across all competitions, they only lost six games.

Man City have now thrown away leads 10 times this season

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Where does this one rank among a series that has seen 10 potential victories turned into five draws and five defeats?

There have perhaps been more spectacular turnarounds, like the 3-0 against Feyenoord that became a 3-3 draw in the final quarter-of-an-hour, or the 1-0 lead against Manchester United with two minutes to play that turned into a derby defeat.

At Brentford, they were 2-0 up after 82 minutes and got pegged back. At Paris Saint-Germain, they led 2-0 after 56 and got stuffed.

But given all that forewarning and the stakes at this novel, but perilous stage of the one competition that might yet rescue City’s campaign, this might just have been the most damning of the lot.

For there was no obvious moment at which all momentum suddenly swung and made a comeback inevitable, in that way that in football it sometimes does. City, if anything, had seized it with Erling Haaland’s penalty with 10 minutes to go. The celebrations at that stage felt filled with relief, as if it were a done thing that they would go to Spain next week ahead.

Madrid’s advances from then on were threatening, but hardly those of a desperate team, knowing that neither a 2-1 reverse, nor 2-2 draw were disastrous results, with a second leg at home still to come.

City simply needed to concentrate and see the game through, with senses surely heightened by the sheer number of times they have failed to do exactly that in the last few months alone.

Defeat at the Etihad leaves Man City with an uphill battle in the second leg of their Champions League play-off at the Bernabeu next week

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Instead came the kind of individual errors that should really surprise us but do not anymore. Ederson has, for some time now, looked an imitation of the catch-all ’keeper that anchored six title wins in seven seasons. Across the two late Madrid goals pretty much every element of the Brazilian’s game failed; distribution, shot-stopping, positioning, decision-making.

Tellingly, those strikes by Brahim Diaz and Jude Bellingham took City’s tally of goals conceded this season to 56, beyond last term’s tally of 54 already, in 21 fewer games.

And yet, of course, they are still alive, with the return to come in the Bernabeu.

Madrid, though, know that however well City start and whatever happens there across the first, who knows, 80, 85 even 90 minutes, there will be a route out of every hole.

Can you think of a team anywhere in world sport less in need of that encouragement?