There were plenty of contenders for 90min‘s ‘Premier League crisis club of the week’.
Southampton are imploding, Liverpool have fully fallen apart, Leeds United have sacked the hilariously nicknamed ‘Yank Lampard’ following another dreadful defeat, but really this week’s ‘crisis club’ could only ever be Man City.
The Citizens are on the brink, and here’s why.
What’s the crisis?
There are two real crises unfolding at Man City right now.
One is on the pitch where Pep Guardiola’s side have somewhat malfunctioned in recent weeks. They’ve lost their last three consecutive Premier League away games and have looked so disjointed in and out of possession.
The other is off the pitch, where Man City have been found to have broken the league’s financial fair play rules over 100 times across a near 10-year period. Said rules broken relate to the commercial partnerships and figures which have allowed them to navigate UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules.
Those infractions are rather unprecedented in the Premier League but could lead to a hefty points deduction or even relegation from the top flight.
Big yikes.
Why are they in crisis?
Again two pronged, we’ll start with the on-the-pitch crisis.
Despite Erling Haaland scoring an astonishing amount of goals, Man City haven’t really worked out how to get the best out of the Norwegian yet. Due to Guardiola’s rigid ‘keep the ball, don’t try anything fancy with it’ tactics, Haaland’s consistent runs in behind defences have been consistently ignored by his City teammates. Judging by the defeat to Tottenham and the fact that Haaland didn’t have a single shot on goal in that game, that seems to be a bit of an issue.
Guardiola’s constant rotation has had a negative effect too, with the ostracisation of Joao Cancelo leading to the full-back going out on loan to Bayern Munich.
Off-the-pitch, City are in crisis because they’ve allegedly been cooking their books by huge commercial deals with companies who were owned by the club’s owners. Obviously that’s something clubs aren’t allowed to do, so they probably shouldn’t have done that.
What can they do to rectify it?
1) Tell the midfielders to play the ball over the top to Haaland. If they do that, Haaland may literally score a billion goals.
2) Somehow get Guardiola to stop overthinking his starting XIs and put the best players on the pitch week in, week out.
3) As for the financial issues…we’re not sure…maybe pray? And get good lawyers, which we’re sure the club can afford.
Credit: 90min.com
