Man City struggle at Man United: Will continued underperformances cost them Champions League qualification?

Are we sure Manchester City will be back in the Champions League next season? Park for a moment the existential threat of 115 charges and simply assess what Pep Guardiola’s side just delivered in a guileless 0-0 draw at Old Trafford. Seven more performances like this, and at least one of Newcastle United and Aston Villa will leapfrog the champions.

Customarily dominant in possession, an Erling Haaland-less City ended this game with nine shots worth a combined 0.49 expected goals. That is the third-lowest mark they’ve delivered in the Premier League under Pep Guardiola. Unlike a win at West Ham and loss at Arsenal, this is not easily explained away as an aberration in a win, an occasion where they ran into an elite team. This was a City who have been designed to get shots for Haaland. Without him, they meandered in search of a reference point.

Outside the box, City can still play to a formula. Their territorial control was absolute, and at the interval, they had completed 224 passes in the United half, three-and-a-half times what their opponents had managed at the other end of the field. It was much the same story in the final third too, but in the penalty area, United out-possessed their visitors 13 to 10.

City had control but no threat. United certainly did not make it easy for them to get into the penalty area, perfectly prepared to drop back into a 5-4-1 out of possession with little more than 20 yards separating their backline from Rasmus Hojlund. Then again, that’s the sort of challenge City have been tasked with continually for nigh on a decade. They used to find it a joy breaking down those blocks. Then they became a team who smashes through it with their 6-foot-4 battering ram.

A team hardwired to get the ball to Haaland had no sense of what its attack should be without the alpha. The outgoing Kevin De Bruyne returned to the more advanced role he had occupied in the pre-Haaland years but for that to be effective, he needed runners and penalty box threats driving beyond him. Omar Marmoush might have been sparky but that was about it given Ilkay Gundogan and Bernardo Silva don’t have the legs to drive into the penalty area as they used to.

Phil Foden has been afforded enough chances to prove he can be the scoring threat he was so often last season. It has long been said that the England international should be the man to step up De Bruyne on his exit. The time to do so is now, and yet the 24 year old still seems comfortable on the peripheries. He might be the reigning PFA Player of the Year, but his triumph was a curious one even considering the sizeable output of 2023-24. Foden lit up games, but in retrospect how often did he bend the big ones to his will like Guardiola needed him to Sunday?

City needed Foden to step up in Haaland’s absence. They got one spurned chance early in the second and not a lot else.

If anyone was going to enliven this exercise in ennui, they were going to be wearing a red shirt. United set themselves the extremely difficult task of executing full pelt counters, often from their own penalty area to City’s. They came close with notable frequency, starting with a free kick on the very edge of the box forced by a one-man Alejandro Garnacho fast break. A better connection from the young Argentine at the back post and Diogo Dalot would have had a fine assist. Patrick Dorgu went close too, a stinging shot from Joshua Zirkzee in the second might also have broken the tie.

Underpinning all of United’s best work was the outstanding Bruno Fernandes. Attacks fizzed into life when the ball came to his boot, every pass released at just the right moment to threaten the City defense. No one in red got the ball into the final third more frequently, nor created more chances nor won the ball back more frequently. Across both sides, he was the one player who seemed more ready to gamble in pursuit of victory.

Given City’s predicament, it is curious they did not. Aston Villa gained ground this weekend and have hit a vein of form that few others in the top five can compare with. Newcastle have two games in hand, win one of them, and they will take City’s place in the top five. Put Haaland and Rodri in the XI, and there would be little to fear from the remaining seven games. The cavalry isn’t coming though, and if this is what the champions look like for the next month and a half, this could all start to go pear-shaped.