What's going on?

Trying to make sense of Manchester City's Jekyll and Hyde start to the new season

Manchester City’s poor start to the 2025/26 season has somehow been understandable and disappointing at the same time.

Understandable because without a proper pre-season, and with several new signings to bed in, an undercooked start always seemed inevitable this year.

And disappointing because the way they lost the last couple of games was infuriatingly stupid, and both results could have been avoided with a bit more common sense and composure.

City were ultimately well beaten in that 2-0 defeat at home to Spurs a couple of weeks ago, but they were also the better team for the first half an hour or so, and could have gone 1-0 up had Omar Marmoush not been such a hot-head when he was slipped through on goal by Erling Haaland.

Then, as has happened so often during Pep Guardiola’s tenure, the opposition took the lead with their first real chance of the match, and as has happened too often over the last year, City’s heads dropped.

James Trafford’s blunder to gift Spurs the second goal in that game was annoying, but what was more concerning was how much sharper, fitter and cohesive Thomas Frank’s side looked compared to City.

That should probably come as no surprise considering City played just one pre-season game compared to Spurs’ eight, but it was a similar story in the capitulation at Brighton last time out.

That day City did make their early dominance count by taking the lead, and looked to have everything under control until just after the hour mark, when Brighton made a quadruple sub, Matheus Nunes gave a stupid penalty away, and everything suddenly went to shit.

Once again, City seemed to just run out of steam and had no answer to Brighton’s equaliser. Even clinging on for a draw would have been an acceptable result, and it’s difficult not to feel incredibly worried and frustrated by their inability to get anything from that game.

Rodri started at Brighton and City looked much better for it, but he clearly doesn’t have 90 minutes in him yet, and why on earth Guardiola decided it would be smart to keep the Spaniard on when he was blowing out of his arse we will never know.

The subs Pep did make at the Amex were akin to rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic, and he and his new coaching staff don’t seem to have figured out what their best side looks like yet, which is also pretty concerning.

Of course, it hasn’t all been bad news for City this season. The win at Wolves on the opening weekend looks like an outlier now, but at the time it suggested they had blown off the cobwebs of last season, hit the ground running and were well equipped for another title challenge.

But in the cold light of the subsequent defeats, that win looks less like a statement of intent and more like a freak result against a poor opponent, which wasn’t without its iffy moments either.

Tijjani Reijnders, Bernardo Silva and Oscar Bobb were the stars of that win at Molineux, but all three have somewhat underwhelmed since. Rayan Cherki showed a glimpse of his brilliance with that debut goal off the bench, but then flattered to deceive on his first start, and is now out injured for two months. His namesake Aït-Nouri looked decent against Wolves, got injured against Spurs, and then was poor against Brighton.

Haaland has started the season with three goals in three games, but could have had more were it not for some poor finishing, while Marmoush and Jérémy Doku have done lots of running around without producing much of any real substance.

Then you’ve got the likes of Phil Foden and Joško Gvardiol who have barely contributed or not contributed at all due to injury, and Savinho, who hasn’t even been on the bench yet due to what can only be described as transfer-related-head-fuckery.

None of which has been conducive to a settled start to the season, and that was before three established players left the club on deadline day and another new goalkeeper was signed - a goalkeeper who is very good but will require City to completely overhaul the way they play. It’s one thing trying to do a rebuild like that over the summer, but trying to do it when the season has already started and tough fixtures are coming thick and fast could well be a painful watch.

It’s tempting to blame the Club World Cup for all this chaos, but City were never going to turn down the chance to play in a money-spinner like that, and it at least gave them the opportunity to get their transfer business done early, and theoretically get a head start on their competitors.

That they exited embarrassingly early to Al Hilal and have made a poor start to the new season is now rather lamentable, especially since Chelsea went on to win the competition and look a lot better than City at the moment.

Maybe many aspects of the current circumstances were unfortunate or unavoidable, but it doesn’t feel like City’s planning for the new season was as solid as it should have been.

The goalkeeping situation should have been sorted out weeks ago, for starters, and the fact that Ederson, Manuel Akanji and İlkay Gündoğan were all on the bench against Brighton and have since left the club is pretty baffling.

Oh, and why the fuck did they not sign a right-back this summer? What was the thinking there? Why have they painted themselves into a corner again? The mind truly boggles.

Guardiola spoke several times towards the end of last season and over the summer about how sure he is that this season will be better than last, and I still just about believe him.

The question is: what does a better season look like for City this year?

On current evidence, they will do incredibly well to finish higher than third, and they’ll need to cut out a significant amount of silly errors if they’re to win the Carabao Cup this year, never mind the Champions League.

It has been said that City’s goal for the season is not necessarily to win the Premier League title, but to at least still be in the conversation for it at the business end. Right now I’d definitely settle for that, and I’m confident that we will see better football and results from Guardiola’s team when everything has calmed down a bit. The problem is, time is already against them.

I think it’s likely City could even get more points this season than the 71 they got last term, but still finish lower in the table. What’s perhaps more concerning than City’s current teething-troubles is the fact that Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs all look better and stronger than they did last season, and it’s looking like being more competitive than ever at the top end of the league.

I guess that’s just the reality of playing in a league where everybody has financial muscle, and cycles turn with ever-increasing speed. Many once believed that City’s four-in-a-row super team was impossible to compete with, and many also believed last season was City’s “transitional season”.

I think the last 12 months show you can’t take anything for granted, and I fear the real transition has in fact barely even begun.

The international break probably came at a good time for City, and will have given Guardiola and his staff pause for thought and a chance to analyse what has gone wrong in recent games.

The immediate future looks rather daunting, though. A win against United on Sunday would go a long way towards rebuilding a good mood around the Etihad, but another defeat to them doesn’t bear thinking about, and then with games against Napoli and Arsenal to come, we could find ourselves firmly in the mud before September is even out if we’re not careful.

It’s hard to feel much optimism at the moment, but City have players to come back and a very strong squad capable of navigating choppy waters and solving problems. They might not have a title in them this season, but they should still be there or thereabouts, and any sense of progress should be welcomed.

In Pep we trust (unless they lose to United again, in which case I’ll be demanding his head on a spike).

Dan