Man City's failure is no longer a surprise. However, despite Pep Guardiola's efforts to change everything, the results are still disappointing. The defense continues to make mistakes. John Stones is back but Ruben Dias cannot participate. The lack of momentum in each match has harmed Man City over the past 2 months, leaving them now facing the prospect of not being able to finish the season in the Top 4.
However, the weakness of the defense is not the only factor. The sleepy, disjointed and uncoordinated attack has harmed Man City. Strangely, an attack that was versatile in previous years under Pep's hands is now surprisingly monotonous and predictable.
Throughout the match, Erling Haaland only had 1 touch in the opponent's penalty area, and that only came in the 89th minute. Meanwhile, Jack Grealish received 16 passes to the left wing in the first half alone. This shows how helpless Man City was in directly crashing into Aston Villa's defense.
The constant "head-butting" in the match against Aston Villa and some previous matches exposed all the weaknesses of Manchester City. During Pep Guardiola's 8 years in charge at the Eithad, Man City were famous worldwide for being a team that dominated the opponent's 1/3 with the familiar 3-2-5 formation.
Man City kept this pattern against Aston Villa. When the visitors had the ball, Rico Lewis moved inside as usual. Meanwhile, Ilkay Gundogan, instead of dropping deep, pressed the opponent's penalty area like a striker. Phil Foden played the "number 10" role while Jack Grealish and Bernardo Silva kept the two wings.
To stop this plan, Villa deployed their players to block any passes from the defenders below. John McGinn was tasked with cutting inside from the right and blocking the pass to Mateo Kovacic. Youri Tielemans was tasked with the same task as Man City began to build up their shape on the opposite side of the pitch. Further back, Amadou Onana and Boubacar Kamara were closely following and closing in on the two Man City '10s'.
With the entire squad locked down like that, Jack Grealish was seen as the only option as he was not surrounded by Aston Villa players. However, Man City may have been wrong to put their faith in Grealish, a striker who has gone 371 days without scoring in the Premier League.
The English striker had a terrible game. Grealish could not receive or coordinate with defenders like Stones or Gvardiol. The situations of holding the ball on the wing and trying to cut inside became predictable to the point of being harmless.
Man City will not have Rodri from now until the end of the season, so when they plan to deploy a high attacking formation, based on the 3-2-5 formation, they do not have enough pressure. Therefore, Pep is forced to transfer the task of creating pressure to the two wings. Unfortunately, both Silva and Grealish do not meet the requirements, in which Grealish is especially bad.
Phil Foden's goal to reduce the gap to 1-2 in the 90+3 minute was not enough to help Man City get a point, but at least it helped the visitors' attack to recreate the strength they had in the previous period. It will be a familiar suggestion for Pep Guardiola to calm down once more to prepare for the reception of Everton this midweek.
