Pep Guardiola said he was looking forward to the international break on Saturday after his Manchester City lost 2-1 at Brighton in the Premier League.
It was City’s fourth defeat in a row, a run unprecedented in the Guardiola era – and never before experienced by Guardiola himself in his entire managerial career.
A sense of crisis is looming over the English champions and this latest defeat means they slip five points behind Liverpool in the table. They beat Aston Villa 2-0 thanks to goals by Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah.
Second-placed City haven’t lost four games in a row since 2006 – two years before the Abu Dhabi takeover of the club and 10 years before Guardiola’s game-changing arrival on the blue side of Manchester.
As for Guardiola, widely regarded as the world’s best coach, he has never lost four straight matches anywhere in his illustrious time in management that began in 2007.
The closest he has come was in the 2014-15 season when, at Bayern Munich, his team lost in a penalty shootout in the German Cup followed by three straight defeats – two in the Bundesliga, when Bayern had already clinched the title, and once in the Champions League.
Guardiola will not have a full squad to choose from for a while yet as star central midfielder Rodri, this year’s Ballon d’Or winner, is out for the season. Guardiola was also missing his four best centre backs – Ruben Dias, John Stones, Manuel Akanji and Nathan Ake – for the Brighton game.
City were dominant in the first half and went in front when Erling Haaland scored his league-leading 12th goal of the campaign.
However, in similar fashion to the 4-1 loss at Sporting in the Champions League on Tuesday, City couldn’t maintain their level in the second half and Brighton fought back, with Joao Pedro equalizing in the 78th minute – he then set up Matt O’Riley for the winner in the 83rd on his Premier League debut.
City’s losing run began at Tottenham in the English League Cup last week, before a 2-1 defeat at Bournemouth in the league – their first league defeat in 11 months.
“I never expect different for the fact that I won in the past, that we are a special,” Guardiola said. “You can lose four games in different competitions. I know after you win, everything is perfect. Against Fulham, we won. It would be miles away, worse than today and Sporting Lisboa and Spurs. Miles away. But after that (Fulham) ‘Ah, great mentality! Huh? Great mentality for the Manchester City players’ it’s not about that. So it’s how you perform. You perform really well. But we are not consistent enough to maintain this level that helps us to win what we won for many years. Hopefully in the future we can come back and if not come back, we will learn from that.”
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