Will Manchester City’s defensive frailties undermine their Premier League title bid?

With just over a third of the season done, the battle for Premier League supremacy is between Arsenal, a defensively strong team finding it increasingly challenging to field a fit back line, and Manchester City, a side shipping goals at one end almost as fast as Erling Haaland can score them at the other.

Since beating Liverpool before the most recent international break, City have conceded 10 goals in four games. That run culminated with an alarming near-capitulation at Fulham on Tuesday night, when Pep Guardiola’s side came within a late goal-line clearance of drawing a game they had led 5-1. 

It was a similar story three days earlier against Leeds, when Phil Foden scored in stoppage time to secure victory after City had squandered a two-goal advantage. The stark reality facing Guardiola, whose team sit five points off the lead ahead of Saturday’s meeting with Sunderland, is that his side have conceded more goals in their past three league outings (eight) than Arsenal have all season (seven).

After the Fulham game, Guardiola expressed confidence that recent results are not evidence of a pattern taking hold. He alluded to nerves on the part of his players and argued that Fulham’s goals were largely the result of his team defending too deep, which allowed Marco Silva’s men to shoot from either side of the 18-yard box.  

What Pep Guardiola said about City’s defensive woes against Fulham

“Three of the four goals [came from] a position we didn’t defend, there were no players there on the edge of the box,” said Guardiola. “That we have, for the future, to improve.”

Guardiola also made the fair point that, for some of the players brought in over the summer, Fulham were unfamiliar opponents. The clear implication was that, with greater time and familiarity, City will get better.

“This will help us in future games,” Guardiola said. “Every game is a new team for some players. You have to make a process to start to correct.”

Guardiola returned to that theme on the eve of Sunderland’s visit to the Etihad, stressing that City have been trying “to understand why we conceded goals” recently, and reiterating that mistakes are “part of our growth”. The question is whether the required corrections will come soon enough to sustain a credible title challenge.

As Guardiola will know better than anyone, there are grounds for optimism. The fact that City could have drawn their past two games should not obscure the reality that they didn’t. As the Spaniard was eager to point out at Craven Cottage, they scored five goals away from home. And on Friday, he highlighted the unusually high conversion rate managed by both Leeds and Fulham.   

Pep Guardiola on Manchester City defensive problems

“[We scored] three goals against Leeds and five against Fulham as well,” said Guardiola. “There are two versions, always we are talking about many good things. So how many shots on target had Leeds? [Four] and scored two? Not too good, but it’s not bad. How many shots on target had Fulham, maybe five, six? So the average they shoot and we concede is high, so we need to improve. 

“Of course I don’t like to concede two goals and four goals and six goals in two games. But sometimes we are the team scoring the most, and we have to build from that. We have to learn to fix these kinds of things and believe we can do better, use what we are, and create chances and goals, because we are built for that.”

Of that there can be no doubt, particularly after Haaland broke Alan Shearer’s record to become the quickest player to reach a century of Premier League goals in midweek. While it will take some getting used to, City’s tendency to play on the counter-attack undoubtedly lends itself to the Norwegian’s strengths. With Phil Foden also in flying form with five goals from 12 league games, there is a little of Jürgen Klopp’s early Liverpool about Guardiola’s team just now, a perhaps misplaced confidence that they can compensate for any defensive deficiencies through sheer weight of goals.

It remains to be seen whether the trend will persist but, for now at least, it leaves us with an intriguing title race. Arsenal have a magnificent defence but are sometimes too conservative; City have no shortage of potency but lack defensive resolve. It makes for a fascinating dynamic.