Of course Spurs followed defeat to Ipswich by thrashing champions Man City. Dejan Kulusevski was sensational. Two players were atrocious for Pep Guardiola.
This was a miserable experience on what should have been an evening of celebration. Guardiola’s renewed commitment, Rodri’s Ballon d’Or ceremony and the restoration of something more closely resembling a Manchester City starting line-up was supposed to kickstart their season, not further condemn it.
It might have looked like a Manchester City team on paper but transferred to grass this was the palest imitation imaginable.
The biggest domestic home defeat of Guardiola’s entire coaching career also equals his heaviest ever as a Premier League manager. At least when Everton thrashed them 4-0 in the middle of his first season, a defence of Bacary Sagna, Nicolas Otamendi, John Stones and Gael Clichy behind Pablo Zabaleta and in front of Claudio Bravo could be completely and obviously overhauled that summer. The work was no less daunting but the path forwards was far clearer.
There is no quick fix this time, no evident remedy to problems that even Dr. Tottenham could not cure. The champions look genuinely broken to the extent that two years seems an ambitious timeline to sort through the mess.
Except this feels different. Guardiola’s Manchester City have lost games before but rarely have they been beaten and made to look so amateurish. This is a vulnerable collection of players trying to remember what and how to do what came so natural and mechanical to them before.
They look, in a word, more emotional. Four players were booked – a tally beaten only four times in a Premier League match under Guardiola, of which they lost three – and each of those yellow cards came after Pedro Porro made it 3-0 to settle the game.
The Rico Lewis and Bernardo Silva cautions in particular seemed like examples of players realising their own mortality, wrestling with the incomprehension of inferiority. That is a fundamental problem Guardiola cannot hope to solve with a bold tactical change, nor answer adequately just by pointing in the general direction of Rodri.
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Feyenoord should be handled easily enough in midweek but Arne Slot could exact immediate revenge at Anfield on Sunday. Then Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace represent banana skins that much stronger Manchester City sides have slipped on in recent years, while Manchester United and Aston Villa are tough fixtures even with neither team currently at their best.
When a home game against Everton on Boxing Day starts to look hazardous and mildly panic-inducing, something has gone dreadfully wrong. Guardiola was still playing when Manchester City last lost five games in a row before this run; this is territory so unfamiliar for the manager, coaches and squad that any opponent should face them without any semblance of fear and assumptions of recovery based on the past must be disregarded.
Tottenham sensed Manchester City were there for the taking but showed enough restraint to capitalise.
They cannot play like this in every game but there is the blueprint when Tottenham expect to have less of the ball: attacking endeavour with defensive discipline; a high line with low-key midfield control; pressing from the front while being prepared to pull back when necessary.
If Ange Postecoglou can build on these foundations then he might make a success of this yet.
As impressive as this performance and result was, it needs to be harnessed properly in the next game onwards to mean anything long term beyond Tottenham’s hex over Guardiola being hysterical, which is admittedly important.
It certainly teased a thrashing, just not the one which unfolded.
Haaland added four more shots without scoring – only against Chelsea in February has he had more off-target shots in a single Premier League game – and Bissouma strolled through the rest of the game without coming close to being booked again. It is easy to envisage Tottenham collapsing had Manchester City marked that rapid start with a goal, but they took encouragement from riding that storm to build a solid base.
The Dragusin-Ben Davies partnership was cause for great pre-match anxiety among Tottenham supporters, especially after their recent Victor Osimhen experience, but both were excellent at the heart of defence while contributing on the ball.
A positional hierarchy exists for a reason but Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven should have to work for their reinstatement and match those levels before coming back in. If not, Dragusin and Davies have a high enough ceiling and floor respectively to continue.
It was just sad when, after being nutmegged by Kulusevski as Tottenham embarked on a counter to another collapsed Manchester City attack, Gundogan tried to keep up with Heung-min Son but his legs simply stopped working properly. The German was again reduced to merely pointing at the imminent threat despite his teammates rather understandably trying to handle the situation instead of waiting for his specific defensive cues.
In those moments, he was a firefighter answering an emergency call while his colleagues were already engulfed in the flames. That was the move from which Porro scored and Gundogan playing 40 more minutes perfectly encapsulates what Guardiola thinks of his other midfield options. An uncharacteristically sentimental signing has only compounded their squad-building problems.
His one-two with Son – whose return pass was sensational – undid Manchester City yet again.
It was a rough old start for Gvardiol, who was also complacent and beaten by Kulusevski for the opener. The Croatian did create eight chances but that was the problem: Manchester City had no midfield and their best attacker was their worst defender.
Two of the goals were covered in his fingerprints but the game was littered with moments which illustrated a level of brilliance Manchester City could not cope with. In the 87th minute with a three-goal advantage, Kulusevski chased down a long ball with no teammate nearby, held it up, spun past the mediocre Foden and would have created another chance had Brennan Johnson held his run.
“I try to kill you not only with the ball, but also without the ball,” he said in an interview before the game. Manchester City ensured this was more assisted suicide than anything but mission accomplished either way.
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Three of the goals came from turnovers. Gvardiol for the second was careless. Foden for the third was poor. Jack Grealish for the fourth was abysmal.
The difference Kevin de Bruyne made in terms of technique when he came on was embarrassing. The Belgian immediately created chances for Gundogan and Haaland and while his accuracy suffered for the attempted invention, the ball was never surrendered complacently or sloppily.
One of those misplaced passes was also to complete a one-two from a short corner in stoppage-time, only for Foden to slip and summarise both his and Manchester City’s risible evening.
When Timo Werner intercepted that ball he was already running. That is Timo Werner’s thing. Timo Werner runs. Timo Werner is fast. Yet as Timo Werner continued doing the one thing he is reliably, consistently good at, Walker ambled alongside him for a second, then broke into a jog, and finally started to sprint at the exact point the German – still running, mind you – surged past him.
Werner, on the run, then centred for Johnson to score.
It was humiliating from Walker but far from unprecedented. Having built much of his career on athleticism and speed it is understandable that he still instinctively falls back on this crutch when defending, but at 34 it no longer works and hasn’t consistently for at least a year. It just comes across as stupid when he performatively doesn’t properly run for a bit, specifically so he can run really fast at the right moment and look brilliant when he stops an attack. Except the loss of even a mere fraction of his pace has sent his timings off completely and resulted in his teams conceding far too many of a similar type of goal on his side; you’d think doing it to lose a sodding European Championship final for England would have encouraged a change in approach.
The highest scorers in the Premier League this season were again stitched together by the selfless excellence of Dominic Solanke, whose hold-up and link-up play carries a scent of Harry Kane, albeit with a remarkable scoring ability traded in for endless energy and functioning ligaments.
Some stops were routine and others required a bit more in terms of reflexes and positioning. His best was probably from Savinho’s offside header. But together with his conviction at corners and in claiming high balls, as well as making bold decisions in possession, this might well have been his best Premier League performance yet.
The finishes were as wonderful as the movement and anticipation which preceded them, while Manchester City never overcame the problems posed by him at times being stationed deep on the left, pulling players out of position while opening up different passing options.
He is right: “This team is much better with me in it.” Any Tottenham revamp should have him at the centre, even after Fulham leave north London with a doctor’s note and 3-0 win next weekend.
Their plight underlines how even the elite clubs with the best in-built protections against failure have to constantly nail their decisions to keep standards high. Manchester City have had probably four poor transfer windows in a row and their squad looks inadequate as a result. Savinho is too raw to have played more games than all but four teammates; the pass he played behind Haaland on a two-v-two counter was maddening. The signing of Gundogan and contract renewal of Walker both seemed driven more by emotion and nostalgia than pragmatism because neither are good enough. Matheus Nunes is a £53m player who cannot be properly trusted. Even the ever-reliable Silva has tailed off considerably and the window to move on more seamlessly has passed. Rodri being irreplaceable is in some way understandable when he is the last properly good central midfielder they signed, and that was five years ago.
The age profile is all wrong, the framework in terms of positions is lopsided and injuries have exacerbated and accelerated those issues.
Then come the exits, an area Manchester City have turned into an artform which has fortified their success. The sales of Julian Alvarez, Cole Palmer and the many Saudi exports can be easily justified in isolation – the fees could hardly be turned down for players in those conditions – but they do contribute to the sense that insisting upon working with a small squad is an inherently difficult balance they have finally faltered on.
