City failed to register a shot on target in their 2-0 Carabao Cup quarter-final loss to Southampton, and their boss will have been dissatisfied with their performance.
Pep Guardiola is a worrier. Even when everything is going fine.
He never sat still last Thursday against Chelsea, summoning half of his Manchester City outfield players for intense discussions within the first half hour of the game – actually before it started in the instance of Kyle Walker, and one minute in the case of Erling Haaland.
The City manager kicks every ball and feels every second of his team’s matches, and it is this approach that has frequently led to him being accused of ‘overthinking’ things and trying to assert too much control over what, at the end of the day, are simply human beings.
He has the trophy cabinet to make such criticism sound clichéd and exaggerated, but as Guardiola returned to Manchester late on Wednesday night, ready for the “ridiculous” challenge of a Manchester derby on Saturday lunchtime, he would have been concerned about some of his players who were on display.
No one played particularly well in City’s bright beam and black outfit, but two squad players, in particular, seemed to suffer more than most.
Sergio Gomez, the young left-back signed after City failed to sign Marc Cucurella, was immediately targeted by the lively Moussa Djenepo, and he couldn’t deal with the Malian’s unpredictability, who went from stepping over himself and running the ball out of play one minute to pinning City back on his own the next.
He was terrific, but Gomez was shocking, and it was the 22-year-old who gave the ball away to Southampton’s Lyanco, allowing Sekou Mara to score.
In midfield meanwhile, it was the former City youngster Romeo Lavia, who only turned 19 last week, who dominated over a player deemed a better fit for Guardiola’s first team last summer Kalvin Phillips.
Lavia was key to the second goal when he expertly progressed the ball from midfield, and from there it was all about Djenepo’s cheekiness and Stefan Ortega’s odd positioning. Phillips and the City midfield were nowhere to be seen.
Now Gomez and Phillips weren’t the only poor City players of course, there were a lot of them (looking at you Jack Grealish), but they play in positions that Guardiola is going to need cover in for the challenges that lie ahead, and they did absolutely nothing to persuade their boss that they could do a useful job for him.
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