Crisis at City has shades of Mourinho's Bridge too far

For all the comments on Pep Guardiola's scratches, some senior figures in football were a bit shocked by the image.

- MIGUEL DELANEY

That even extended to the top levels of Liverpool, who Manchester City travel to face tomorrow.

It was certainly unusual, but these are unusual times. The 3-3 collapse at home to Feyenoord made it even clearer that City’s form is more than a blip. In the space of just five games, Guardiola has suffered a worst ever league defeat, a worst ever run of losses – with four becoming five – and a first ever game where one of his teams squandered a three-goal lead.

A 3-0 advantage over Feyenoord at home was supposed to be the sort of situation where form self-corrects but it just saw more calamitous error. Those at Liverpool have been comparing it to Jurgen Klopp’s 2022-23 season, which the German felt he couldn’t leave as his last campaign at Anfield. The same club can now make it even more torrid for City. They sense opportunity.

So does pretty much everyone that faces the champions right now. It feeds into this striking feeling about City’s form. Every time you think it can’t possibly get worse, it does. That alone has been a shock to confidence, one that is compounding everything.

As much as Liverpool are fairly comparing that to Klopp, the closest parallel is in Jose Mourinho’s 2015-16 campaign at Chelsea. That was the one that Antonio Conte coldly referred to as “the Mourinho season”. For all that the Portuguese has fallen since then, one of the reasons that period was so jaw-dropping was because such vulnerability had never before been witnessed in Mourinho’s career. He was still seen as Guardiola’s grand rival at the top of the game, with his teams impregnable where the Catalan’s were irresistible. Both had that air of invulnerability.

No more. Nine years later, Guardiola is now going through what Mourinho did at Stamford Bridge, but there feels even more to it.