Every Monday morning, one team in the Premier League will be the focus of extreme criticism, wilting under the scrutiny like a hobbit under Sauron’s eye. The aim is to ensure that you are not that team. 

This hysterical trend, discussed so well by Danny Kelly on this site last week, has never been so intense or capricious. And this week it’s Liverpool’s turn. Again. 

For that reason, Manchester City’s defeat to Aston Villa seems to have escaped further examination. In fact, City’s third defeat of the season was met with little more than a shrug of resignation because few people fear them as they once did.

It’s been like this for almost exactly a year. On October 26, 2024, they beat Southampton 1-0, went to the top of the table, Pep Guardiola said that he would, “learn a lot from Russell (Martin),” and then they lost four games on the bounce and it all went wrong. They haven’t been quite right ever since. What the hell did he learn?

But does Sunday’s defeat mean, as many have suggested, that City are out of the title race? No, of course it doesn’t. And we really need to dissuade ourselves of the notion that losing three games automatically ends a title challenge.

In exactly half of the past 20 Premier League seasons the eventual champions have actually lost five or more games. Well, five or six games to be precise. You have to go all the way back to 1995 and Blackburn Rovers to find a title-winning side with seven defeats to their name, and to be fair to them, that was a 42 game campaign. 

So it’s seven defeats. That’s where, without certainty but with a degree of safety, we can draw our line. I will accept the view that losing seven means that it’s over. 

But seriously, anyone who is prepared to hand the trophy to Arsenal now after just nine games in the fervent belief that they won’t do anything silly in the next 29 has clearly not been watching Arsenal for as long as I have. They were my summer tip for the title because I felt they were the team with the fewest issues. But they’re still Arsenal.  

So let’s look at that Villa game and see what we can discern. From the opening exchanges, it’s clear that these are two very similar teams. Both operate with an extremely high press, committing five or six men to harass each other when they take their dangerously short goal kicks. Both teams elect to try to play their way through that press, both rely upon relentless work rate, smart, quick passing and thus both can be undone by individual errors.

City went into this clash without their talismanic midfielder Rodri, still suffering from a hamstring injury. Ostensibly, they lined up with Tijjani Reijnders at the back of the midfield, but Pep being Pep, that was too simple and so there was also an effort to push John Stones out of defence to allow Reijnders to move up in support of the attack. 

And how that support is needed. Erling Haaland has claimed eleven Premier League goals already this season and duly tops his team’s goalscoring chart. Maxime Esteve is in second place, which is concerning because he plays for Burnley. It’s never a great sign when ‘own goals’ is your second highest scorer. 

Reijnders’ box-to-box efforts caught Pep’s eye at AC Milan last season where he racked up ten Serie A goals, he is currently second behind Haaland for shots taken (albeit with a miserable on-target rate of just 26%) but it’s harder to shoot when you’re deployed so much deeper. Nevertheless, with Phil Foden returning to form (joint second in City’s ranks for completed open play passes leading to a shot) and Bernardo Silva, they were not exactly lacking creativity. 

But what really scuppered City here was not their own shortcomings, it was the strengths of their opposition. Aston Villa might not have had the best start to the season, but they are incredibly difficult to play against when they’re in this sort of mood. They have some issues. Morgan Rogers had a slow start to the season and Ollie Watkins looks to have lost a little bit of pace, but there’s nothing wrong with the back of their midfield. 

Amadou Onana was indomitable here. He looms in a most disconcerting way, rolling effortlessly into vulnerable areas to shore them up, like a brick wall on greased wheels. He led the way for blocks, no-one in Villa’s team made more tackles. City’s moves were building up nicely, but they couldn’t find a way through him. They tried to spread the play wide, but neither Savinho nor Oscar Bobb could make much headway against Matty Cash and Lucas Digne. 

Should Jeremy Doku or Rayan Cherki have started? Possibly. But that’s a hindsight decision and after a summer of Gianni-Bowl football, it’s hard to judge Guardiola too harshly for trying to carefully rotate his players. 

He said afterwards that his team had, “performed really well,” which was pushing it a bit, and that “in general, our game was good,” which was closer to the mark. 

They really didn’t do a lot wrong here. They passed the ball well, they moved well, they created more chances than Villa, but they were low grade chances and they failed to test the goalkeeper often enough. Haaland was set clear in the first half, the textbook probing through ball from Bernardo Silva released for him to chase like a loose war horse in the City of London, but Emi Martinez was equal to it. And when City conceded, it wasn’t their failing so much as it was a brilliantly worked and taken corner, smashed home by Cash.

In short, Villa are a very good side who played extremely well and City couldn’t break them down. This, unfortunately for City, is just one of those things that happens when very good football teams play each other. There is no systemic failure here, there is no evidence of looming catastrophe. This was just a football match that didn’t go City’s way. 

The real issue here, and possibly one for a different article, is that City no longer have it as ‘easy’ as they once did. They have slowly relinquished legendary talents like Sergio Aguero, Kevin de Bruyne and Vincent Kompany, giants who are not replaced easily. They can’t outspend everyone by the rate at which they used to anymore because, all legal matters considered, that would not be a good look right now. And when clubs like Aston Villa (and Arsenal and Liverpool and Newcastle) invest well, plan well and play well, they catch up. When clubs like Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth operate with such intelligence, they can land punches on teams that might once have considered themselves impregnable. 

It’s bad for City because it means that their era of total dominance is over. But it’s not bad for football because it just means they’re more normal now. And being normal means occasionally losing games like this one. 

Is it a disaster that they’ve lost three already? Well, it’s certainly not a positive development. But does it mean that Pep is finished, City are broken and that we should send the Premier League trophy and a box of red and white ribbons to North London? Don’t be daft. There’s a long way to go yet.