Manchester City: Four Key Matches That Defined Their Season
3. October 6, 2019, Wolves stun Manchester City at the Etihad
Pep Guardiola’s squad came back home two weeks after dismantling Watford. They used a B-team in a Carabao Cup win against Preston and had fairly convincing victories against Everton and Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League.
Despite the usual fixture congestion, it appeared that Manchester City was back on track. The biggest concern was that Liverpool had kept winning themselves and had built up an eight-point lead in the Premier League table.
Wolverhampton who had also been dealing with European fixture congestion, which for them was new territory, had played competitive matches since the end of July. They had struggled at the start of the league campaign and their prospects for victory at the Etihad seemed doubtful.
Against Wolves, Guardiola used a 4-2-3-1 formation with Otamendi and Fernandinho starting as center backs. He had used the same formation in the loss against Norwich City also with Otamendi starting at the center of the defense.
Wolverhampton’s specialty has always been to play stout defense and to counter-attack when the opportunities presented themselves. The strategy was no different against City as they used a 3-5-2 formation designed to bunker and strike.
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The other part of their plan was to strike down the middle of Manchester City’s defense. Throughout the first half, Wolves had several opportunities on the counter when they were able to disrupt a City passing angle. Manchester City’s backline was often caught out of position and unable to respond to the pace of the Wolves’ attack. The home side was lucky to have not given up an early goal.
At half-time, Pep Guardiola substituted Kyle Walker with Oleksandr Zinchenko while moving Joao Cancelo from the left to the right side of the backline in an attempt to stop the leaks.
It did not work.
In the 76th minute, Jonny was substituted in for Wolves and Adama Traore was able to move more into an attacking position.
Three minutes later, Traore and Raul Jimenez were racing down the pitch facing down only two City defenders leading to an easy Traore goal to take a 1-0 advantage.
The Etihad crowd went silent.
As the crowd started to beat the Manchester traffic, Traore got the clinching goal in injury time. Manchester City was beaten 2-0. This was their first loss at home since December of 2018.
The aura of invincibility was over.
This loss showed that Manchester City’s defeat to Norwich was not a fluke after all. It further illustrated that their backline was starting to become a significant liability.
Making matters worse, Liverpool had won their match the day before stretching their lead to eleven points in the table. Unlike last season, City was failing to keep up the pace.