• Traoré: A bitter Barcelona guard squad

Pep Guardiola is so accustomed to league success, with nine championships in his 11 full seasons as a coach, that any scenario other than the triumph carries inevitable dyes of catastrophe, sometimes justifiably, sometimes not so much. Is the current situation of Manchester City ? Surely not, but it draws an incipient crisis unknown to Guardiola. After only eight days played in the Premier League, the citizen set already yields eight points with respect to the first classified, a Liverpool that adds all its matches for victories. "When a team takes you eight points it is better not to think about it," the coach resigned Sunday after his second defeat of the season, at Wolves' house (0-2). Little else could I do.

The selection stop leaves the Spanish coach in an unprecedented situation in his career on the benches. He had never reached an eighth day at so many points of the leader and only once had he done it with fewer points than the 16 that his City now has. It was in the 2011/12 season, the last one that was in charge of Barcelona , with 15 points at this point, four of the Levant , surprising leader that year. In his other nine active seasons, he led the table after the eighth day or was at a point who did. So high is its ribbon that impacts that now neither rubs it.

Discounting sound eliminations of Champions and his first season in England (2016/17), in which he finished third at 15 points from Chelsea, Guardiola is currently experiencing his worst moment as coach. In these eight days he has already given a draw and two losses, when last year he finished the Premier with only two matches and four lost matches. In other words, the City has already left eight points on the road, half of the 16 that gave up in total in the last league championship.

In any other major European league, those 16 points that City now has would serve to be fully involved in the fight for the leadership - Real Madrid, for example, is 18 - but in the Premier League they only confer a first ticket line to watch Liverpool from a distance. Because beyond the problems of his team, which has them, the Chinese in the Guardiola shoe is the exceptional performance of the current European champion, whose absolute priority this season is to lift the national scepter. Liverpool has not been champion of the English league since 1990, which means that it does not even have in its windows a Premier League , a format that was established in 1992.

Plague of injuries

So while Europe worries, with a defeat in Naples and a win in extremis against Salzburg after wasting a three-goal advantage, Liverpool imposes a tyranny in the Premier for which the City finds no possible replica. In part, because the injuries are over rolling your defense. Laporte and Stones have been in the infirmary for a few weeks, leaving the always discussed Otamendi as the only healthy center. Fernandinho is being the emergency patch, evidencing Guardiola's mistake of not hiring a substitute for Kompany this summer. On the left side, Mendy continues mired in her spiral of injuries and lacks a clear substitute. Zinchenko has never gone from being a patch, as was Cancelo in the defeat against Wolves, and Angeliño is not yet - and perhaps never is - up to the demands of a team like City.

It also happens that in these first eight days the City has not faced any of the roosters of the Premier except for Tottenham, with which he tied in London. The high mountain will arrive between November 10 and December 14, just over a month in which you will be on your way to Liverpool, Chelsea, United and Arsenal. Particularly decisive will be the confrontation against the Klopp team in Anfield, in which Guardiola will test if his team still has the capacity to react in this Premier, which from an early age paints in red.

The only - and poor - consolation that Guardiola can find right now is that there are those who are in an even worse situation than yours, starting with their United neighbors, twelfth with just nine points after their catastrophic management of the last market. And what about Tottenham , humiliated by Bayern (2-7) in the Champions League and stuck with 11 points in the ninth position of the table after investing 114 million euros to reinforce the team that was runner-up in Europe in May. But you know: evil of many ...

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