Given Manchester City’s turbulent history before their recent success, it would be a bit of a stretch to recommend that this series of excruciating bureaucracy has provided its enthusiasts with new experiences.
The once resilient City fans who traveled to Leicester even showed they had lost their capacity for dark humor by chanting “City stand” after their first goal.
But it’s certainly a run that has brought back some unfamiliar experiences for those old heads as well as some novelty for younger supporters.
Today, for instance, City got to experience one of the greatest feelings in football, one so often denied to the biggest and most successful clubs: completely housing a victory you absolutely do not deserve by somehow following almost 30 minutes of sustained yet unrewarded pressure on your own goal by scoring with your very first attack of the half.
Throughout City’s frankly astonishing form, which now boasts two wins in 14 games, many have left a sort of vapid assumption that “Pep will fix this” without ever giving a convincing concept of what it will entail. . . OR even what “this” is.
It seems mainly to be based on Guardiola’s genuinely astonishing managerial CV, which is absolutely fair enough, and more tenuously on a vaguer notion that City always struggle a bit before motoring on from January. But the struggle has always previously been things like ‘a defeat to Spurs and then a frustrating draw with Crystal Palace’ surrounded by lots of other wins. Not those results surrounded by lots of other defeats and draws. It’s never been one win in 13 that needed sorting.
As welcome and important as that 2-0 win at Leicester was, it was not an afternoon that felt like “it” was “resolved” in any meaningful way. The same fragilities that provided this recent and confusing collapse were once again highlighted. .
In the first 10 minutes of the match, Leicester won the ball 3 times and may have only scored 3 goals. On two occasions, City were saved from the crisis thanks to Jamie Vardy deflecting from an offside during kick-off time when he didn’t want to be so precise, given that the acres on which he invited to run were huge.
The Vardy Blindspot has long been up there with the Spurs Blindspot on the Pep Weirdness Index so there was always potential for something daft there, and had the old warhorse had one of his more clinical afternoons it’s fair to say Pep’s woes would have deepened further.
An early penalty and a possible red card for Stefan Ortega were avoided thanks to an offside. A terrible mistake by Josko Gvardiol while trying to head the ball towards his goalkeeper went unpunished. In the early stages of the second half in which Leicester dominated the game, there were more missed opportunities, adding a high and flying volley attempt where the scenario actually called for a diving header.
That opportunity presented itself before the decisive moment came to paint a misleading picture of an away win for an elite team.
The goals contained echoes of City’s former self. Goals born of muscular reminiscence and challenge, the first was a clever passing play that ended in a Phil Foden shot that was deflected for a corner, but was only deflected to Savinho, unmarked beyond the post of the moment, James Justin had been drawn in. take over Bernardo Silva’s career.
The goal of the moment was even more Old City, with New City’s James McAtee playing a big role in its creation and the Goalbot 3000 even though everything went back to normal after some much-needed updates and fixes following recent glitches.
Even after that, there were more chances for Leicester and while the result may provide a springboard for. . . Something, Pep and his players will know that luck is on their side and of little value beyond the result and some very occasional glimpses of the offensive schemes hinted at a line drawn in the sand or a bent corner.
Leicester, a team suffering from the threat of relegation under an unconvincing new manager, will see this as a real missed opportunity. That in itself is where City are and how difficult it can be to get out of an accident like this.
We’ve noted that teams have taken their chances at City before, only to concede, and then faded away knowing their chance in the match had passed. Leicester did not do it here, precisely because of the vulnerability that we now know City will show. A building that takes years to build can be destroyed in weeks; This is life in the city now.
Even if the effects improve, there will most likely be more afternoons and evenings like this, when everything will have to be given up and won, when groups refuse to sit still because they retain the honest confidence that City can be harmed.
Perhaps the most important thing is that City know it too.
This was a desperately needed victory just to stem the bleeding. But it is one small and unconvincing step on what remains a long and uncertain road for the fallen champions.