In red and blue meltdown, Manchester is football’s misery town

“It has happened many, many times.” This was not Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola reacting to his team winning the Premier League for the fourth straight season. This was the famed Spanish tactician’s reaction to watching his side throw away yet another lead this season, in a gut-wrenching 3-2 first-leg Uefa Champions League playoff loss to Real Madrid at home.Sporting CP, Feyenoord, PSG — it’s happened many, many times indeed, and, worryingly for Guardiola’s side, not just in the Champions League, even if Kylian Mbappe ensured that’s a competition City no longer have to worry about for the rest of this season.The French superstar’s scintillating hat-trick in the 3-1 second-leg win for Madrid at the Bernabeu on February 19 saw City fail to reach the round of 16 for the first time in nine seasons under Guardiola’s watch. “We have been extraordinarily extraordinary in the past, but not anymore,” the City boss would bitterly concede later.So, how did it come to this pass? How did a team that has set the benchmark both domestically and in Europe, season after season since Guardiola’s arrival, suddenly become this fragile?What City’s shocking slump this season has also done is contribute to a rather unusual spectacle unfolding across town. For, it’s perhaps the first time in recent memory where a pall of gloom hangs over both the red and blue halves of a proud footballing habitat.Unlike their ‘noisy neighbours’, however, Manchester United’s period of struggle stretches much deeper, and there just doesn’t seem to be an end to their woes. The manager may have changed, but the negative results have piled up, and with it, the merciless memes on social media.The 1-0 loss to Tottenham on February 16 was United’s eighth defeat in their last 12 Premier League games. Suffice to say, replacing the sacked Erik ten Hag with Portuguese coach Ruben Amorim hasn’t exactly stopped the rot at Old Trafford. The enormity of the task is something the young Portuguese coach is grappling with.While their situations aren’t quite the same, one common hurdle faced by the two Manchester giants has been injuries to key players. City were left to grapple with a mounting casualty list, including several starting defenders, for the better part of November and December and its impact was seen over a horrendous run that yielded just one win from 13 games. Any hopes of winning a record-extending fifth straight Premier League crown were laid to rest then and there! medium118609378If there’s a player whose absence City have really felt, however, it is undoubtedly Rodri. The stats bear testimony to how pivotal a figure the Spain international is in that City team. From his arrival ahead of the 2019-20 season up to last September, when he suffered a season-ending ACL injury in a 2-2 draw with Arsenal, City had lost just 11% of the 260 games they had played across all competitions with Rodri in the side. Without their midfield general, Guardiola’s men lost 24% of their games (45) according to data provided by Opta.In the 2023-24 campaign, which would ultimately see him win the Ballon d’Or, Rodri achieved a new Premier League record (since 2003-04) for successful passes (3,359) and successful passes in the opposition’s half (2,122) in a single season.Ahead of City’s clash with Newcastle on February 15, Guardiola made an interesting observation about where he believes his team have been found wanting this season. “I accept when the opponents have the ball, I’m going to suffer. But now we are suffering when we have the ball. It never happened before,” he said.Here’s something else that never happened before. Madrid managed 20 shots on City’s goal in the first leg of their playoff — the most by any team against the English champions in a home Champions League match since Guardiola took charge in 2016. It was, in fact, the second-highest number of shots on goal conceded by City in a Champions League clash anywhere in the Guardiola era.And you don’t have to go too far back to find out who did better. It was PSG who rallied from a 2-0 deficit to beat City 4-2 in Paris just last month. An indication of how a team that once bullied opponents high up the pitch is now more vulnerable and easier to play through. An indication of what happens to City when Rodri isn’t there.The injury crisis forced City to act in the January transfer window, with the club spending around £180mn to bring in Egypt forward Omar Marmoush from Eintracht Frankfurt, as well as a pair of young defenders in Abdukodir Khusanov and Vitor Reis. It’s the £50mn arrival of Nico Gonzalez from Porto, however, that Guardiola seems most excited about. After the 23-year-old impressed on his Premier League debut against Newcastle, the manager went as far as describing Gonzalez a “mini Rodri”. “The feeling is that the club has signed an incredible player for the future in terms of mentality,” Guardiola said. medium118609427Speaking of the future, City, of course, have serious off-field problems to contend with as well, as they await the verdict of their legal showdown with the Premier League who have charged the champions with 115 alleged violations of financial regulations. Guardiola recently said he expects his club to learn their fate “in one month”. If found guilty, City could be handed a massive points deduction or even relegated by the independent commission that held a hearing on the matter from September 16 to December 6.At this point at least, relegation is a word that seems to have the red half of Manchester more worried. James Maddison’s first-half strike for Spurs sent United tumbling to their 12th defeat out of the 25 Premier League games they have played this season. In a worrying omen for Amorim’s side, the last time United had lost that many times from their first 25 league games was in 1973-74, when they were indeed relegated from the first division. As of now, the Red Devils lie 15th, two places from the bottom three, but with 12 points separating them from the relegation zone, you would think they should survive the drop.Rio Ferdinand, for one, isn’t so sure. The former United star went so far as to wonder if Amorim’s men were capable of even winning another game from their remaining fixtures.“Manchester United are absolutely struggling now. Only Wolves and West Ham separate my club from the relegation places. Do you realise we are that close?” Ferdinand said on his YouTube channel, adding that he couldn’t draw much confidence from looking at United’s fixture list.“Normally, you look at the fixture list and you can see where the points are coming from. We just looked at the fixture list and I’m not seeing outright wins. That’s the problem,” he added.When the United hierarchy brought in Amorim from Sporting in November, making him their sixth permanent manager since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013, there was an air of optimism around Old Trafford. It seemed to grow stronger when United, trailing by a goal until the 88th minute, snatched a dramatic 2-1 Manchester derby win in the Premier League at the Etihad Stadium in December.But then recent experiences have also made the United faithful wary about getting carried away by the odd positive result. What transpired after last May’s FA Cup victory is a great example.Sure enough, just over a month after the high of beating their crosstown rivals, a 3-1 defeat to Brighton — United’s fourth defeat in five league games at that stage — prompted Amorim himself to brutally admit that his side were “maybe the worst team in the history of Manchester United”. medium118609368So, what’s the way forward for a manager whose first 14 games in charge have delivered fewer points than his predecessor’s final 14 matches? To begin with, former United players feel it’s about time the 40-year-old considers doing away with his preferred 3-4-3 formation, even though Amorim said he would stick with his beliefs after their latest setback.“Right at the outset I liked what he was saying, everything added up. But at some point, you have got to start questioning, and I think we are getting to that point, if we are not already there,” said Michael Owen on the Matchday Live panel after the loss to Spurs.Speaking on his podcast after United’s home defeat to Crystal Palace at the start of the month, former club captain Gary Neville also voiced concern over the potential harm of Amorim refusing to tweak his system.“The more you lose, the more difficult it is for the manager to convince the players of his idea. It will depress the thoughts of the players to a point whereby they will start to lose faith in the idea and it will damage you,” said Neville, an eight-time Premier League winner with the Red Devils.Like his City counterpart, Amorim’s cause too hasn’t been helped by a spate of injuries. In the time between their FA Cup victory over Leicester on February 7 and the defeat to Spurs, United lost four players to injury. The latest blow came when Amorim confirmed that the versatile Amad Diallo, United’s top scorer in all competitions (9 goals) this season, would be out for the remainder of the campaign after sustaining an ankle injury.The Ivory Coast international joins Kobbie Mainoo, Manuel Ugarte and Toby Collyer on the sidelines, as well as long-term casualties Luke Shaw, Mason Mount, Lisandro Martinez and Jonny Evans.It’s been a year since British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe paid $1.3bn for an initial 25% stake in United and seized control of the club’s sporting operations. The FA Cup triumph at Wembley followed, as Ratcliffe described his investment as “just the beginning of our journey to take Manchester United back to the top of English, European and world football”.Frustratingly for United fans, the journey back to the top seems to be taking a lot longer than they would have liked.