Why do Manchester City keep conceding goals in quick succession?

At this rate, Pep Guardiola will soon run out of fingers to count Manchester City’s collapses on.

Real Madrid scored in the 86th and 92nd minutes to win 3-2 at the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday and take a one-goal lead back to the Bernabeu for their Champions League play-off’s second leg next Wednesday. Afterwards, Guardiola recalled four of the other eight times City have conceded in quick succession this season — all of them since early November.

“Feyenoord, Sporting Lisbon, Brentford, Man United… many games we gave away,” he said. “We have to look at ourselves. At this level, it’s so difficult. It’s not the first time, it (has) happened too much this season.”

It shows no signs of being the last time, either.

The Madrid defeat was the ninth instance in their past 24 games — a run stretching back to the 2-1 Carabao Cup loss away to Tottenham Hotspur on October 30 — where City have conceded twice in the space of 10 minutes.

Their form over that run of matches is abject: eight wins, four draws and 12 defeats, while conceding twice or more 15 times. It feels like a lifetime ago, but City actually started the season with a 14-game unbeaten run, only conceding more than once in two of those matches and never in quick succession as they pursued a fifth straight Premier League title.

Their first collapse this season was away to Sporting CP in Lisbon on November 5, scoring first but losing 4-1. “I have to try and find an explanation. Sometimes it is just football,” Guardiola said afterwards. He pointed out that City could have had the game won by half-time, and were punished for wasteful finishing.

More than three months later, Guardiola is still searching for explanations — plural. It is a multifaceted problem all too easily oversimplified to key midfielder Rodri’s season-ending knee injury in September or chalked up as psychological weaknesses and a lack of leadership.

City’s collapses have manifested themselves differently.

“I don’t know (what happened),” Jack Grealish told TNT Sports after the 4-2 Champions League away defeat against Paris Saint-Germain last month. The irony that night was City went 2-0 up with two goals in three second-half minutes, then PSG cancelled that lead out with a four-minute flurry of their own.

“Usually in these moments we’re so good,” added Grealish. “We’ve not been able to control the game and see it out. It’s weird because, in every other season, we’ve been so good in these moments, managing the game.”

He’s right. City only conceded in quick succession (ie, within 10 minutes) four times in 55 matches last season. In their treble-winning 2022-23 campaign it was also four instances in 60 games, and four again across their 57 outings in 2021-22. Guardiola’s squad might be ageing, but they have technicians, playmakers and collective experience in abundance.

The fundamental problem is keeping possession, for so long City’s super-strength under this manager. “To play, you have to play. We could not,” Guardiola said to TNT Sports after that same defeat in Paris. “To defend the result, you have to take the ball. We didn’t have it.”

The clearest example of this was against Sporting. City got their press wrong from kick-off at the start of the second half, and a simple one-two was enough for Pedro Goncalves to get in behind their midfield. He slipped wing-back Maximiliano Araujo through to fire past Ederson.

Only 86 seconds after Araujo’s shot hit the net, Sporting had a penalty. From the kick-off, City immediately shifted into a 3-1-3-3 shape against Sporting’s back five. Manuel Akanji passed out to Josko Gvardiol, who tucked in as a third centre-back. He had the space to carry forward.

But then Gvardiol played a pass he shouldn’t have.

He has three reasonable options: find Matheus Nunes, hit a switch to right-winger Savinho, or turn and play backwards. Instead, he passes into the compact Sporting block, and without the necessary precision. His ball goes behind Phil Foden — who hasn’t really shown for a pass — and Sporting take possession, immediately playing into the space left by Gvardiol’s advance.

No 10 Francisco Trincao collects, with Foden and Gvardiol both in his wake. City have two covering centre-backs but Akanji backs off, mindful of leaving No 9 Viktor Gyokeres isolated against inexperienced youngster Jahmai Simpson-Pusey. Trincao carries all the way to the penalty area, unchallenged.

Then, in an attempt to compensate for his earlier error, Gvardiol tries to tackle Trincao and only bundles him over. Gyokeres scores the penalty and suddenly, from the game being 1-1 at half-time, City are 3-1 down before the clock has hit 49 minutes.

After the Madrid defeat this week, Guardiola virtually repeated his comments from that night three weeks earlier in Paris: “In the second half, we could not make the passes that we needed to play. We wanted to attack so quickly but when we attack so quick with the strikers that they have, it’s more difficult.”

Madrid’s equaliser for 2-2 stemmed from Ederson hooking a drop-kick straight to Jude Bellingham, the most unforgivable of unforced errors. Erling Haaland, waiting to take kick-off, put his finger to his temple and told his team-mates to use their heads.

Per 90 minutes while ahead this season, City are averaging four fewer sequences of 10-plus passes than last term (from 26 down to 22). Their build-up is frequently rushed and errors abound.

Foden bled possession too much during the second half of their 5-1 defeat away to Arsenal on February 2.

It was his overly ambitious pass — just after a City regain in their own third — that led to the second Arsenal goal, moments after Haaland had equalised. He had seven team-mates behind him, a moment to recycle the ball.

To Foden’s credit, he kept showing for passes and trying to play, something which Grealish said City had lacked in Paris.

Here is another unnecessary giveaway not long after the above moment. Foden receives Mateo Kovacic’s midfield-splitting pass, he scans and sees Haaland running in behind, but declines the through ball and tries to dribble his way out of trouble.

He is tackled instead and City are out of possession again.

In their 37 matches this season, City have made 21 errors leading to shots and their opponents have scored 14 from those mistakes. That’s more errors leading to goals than City made in the past three campaigns combined (three in both 2021-22 and 2022-23, five in 2023-24).

There was even one late-on against Madrid from the ever-reliable John Stones.

He had moved to left centre-back after starting the game well as a No 6 in midfield, and got a pass to Bernardo Silva completely wrong. Bellingham intercepted it and drove forward, and Bernardo bundled him over just outside the box, somehow managing to not concede a foul.

Ten different City players have committed errors leading to shots by the opposition, with Gvardiol (five) making the most. For all he offers in attacking output, the Croatia international has weaknesses at defending the back post and picking and executing passes under pressure.

That showed in the 4-0 home defeat against Tottenham in November, when James Maddison scored twice in seven minutes. City’s build-up was overly short considering the strengths of Spurs’ press and the vulnerability of their makeshift centre-back pairing (Radu Dragusin and Ben Davies), which looked ripe for Haaland to exploit.

From a short goal kick, all three of City’s midfielders — Rico Lewis, Bernardo and Ilkay Gundogan — come deep, and the latter has the ball on the edge of the box. Bernardo and Gvardiol work a rotation.

City go around the press, from Gundogan to Bernardo and back to Akanji. The issue here is that all three midfielders (the yellow dots below) are too close together and are all showing for the ball — Tottenham only need two players to cover the lot of them. Bernardo does make a penetrative run as Akanji passes to Gvardiol, but City’s slow approach play has allowed Spurs to lock them in.

Tottenham right-back Pedro Porro closing in, Gvardiol’s passing options to Akanji or Ederson are shut down, so he tries to split the press with a cute, angled ball inside to Gundogan. Striker Dominic Solanke reads that and jumps, only for Gvardiol to get the pass wrong anyway. It goes too far inside — and straight to Maddison.

An overhead view of the moment Gvardiol makes that pass is telling.

With Foden and left-winger Savinho, plus the trio of City midfielders, they have too many bodies close to their goal to play long (Haaland is out of shot, up on the halfway line).

A compounding problem is the position of right-back Kyle Walker, who is out on his touchline and not in view in the grab above. Such width is essential to stretch teams in build-up play, but leaves big spaces to cover once a turnover occurs.

Spurs now create a one-v-one with two passes.

Maddison plays laterally to Son Heung-min, then runs beyond. After changing the angle with a short dribble, Son slots him through to poke a finish past Ederson.

The solution is not just to go direct more often.

Take the 2-2 away draw against Brentford last month, when City’s notably long passes created two goals, but they dropped points because, guess what, they conceded twice in 10 minutes late on.

Earlier in that game, a direct approach was optimal against Brentford’s man-for-man press, as Haaland was left one-v-one and it gave space for Foden and Savinho to run off him.

Once they were 2-0 up, though, it created chaos and turnover which City neither needed nor wanted, and it drained them. Foden said the team became “leggy”.

Long balls also worked to exploit Chelsea’s high line in the 3-1 home win last month, while Ederson’s poor distance kicking away to PSG meant City kept turning the ball over and facing waves of attacks.

There is a problem of adaptability — knowing what the game needs and executing those tactics.

Guardiola’s insistence that City need to control games with possession is because, without the ball, their levels have dropped. They only rank eighth in the 2024-25 Premier League for final-third regains per match (4.7), a worrying decline from 7.5 per game last season. Meanwhile, their out-of-possession physical output numbers — total distance, high-intensity and sprinting distances — have all risen.

City are pressing with a lot less coordination, being played through (or round) and being forced to run more. Therefore they are more fatigued when dropping into a mid-block, and defending more passively in that phase, which makes it easier for opponents to exploit their high line, which is more aggressive than ever under Guardiola.

Bellingham’s stoppage-time winner on Tuesday demonstrated City’s issues when they press high. Perhaps in another season, they would have sat off and accepted a draw, but not here. With the visitors building up in a 4-2-4 shape, City went man-for-man in the press, and Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois kept hitting balls long to the four-v-four on halfway.

City’s defence got their adjustments all wrong, as Fran Garcia, a left-back, had just come on for forward Kylian Mbappe. Madrid went short, then played long as City locked on.

Ideally, Stones and Ruben Dias would be fulfilling each other’s roles here, as Dias is City’s best aerial defender. The Portugal international half-jumps to Garcia and then tries to retreat, but Stones has held his deeper position, which leaves Bellingham unmarked to get the first contact.

The danger looks to be averted, as Kovacic recovers to collect Bellingham’s header, beating Garcia to the ball. Really, he should hook this upfield or play it all the way back to Ederson.

Instead, he passes back to Lewis (who has dropped off massively, concerned about leaving space in-behind for Vinicius Junior) but this comes up short and the England international does not go to the ball. Vinicius Jr gets there first, pokes it past Lewis and races through.

Then, Ederson races out when he really doesn’t need to, because Dias is covering and Vinicius Jr is still over 20 yards from goal. This opens up the lob, which the Brazil international tries, only to slice it wide.

Bellingham has continued his run, though, and beats Stones to the loose ball before it goes out of play, tapping into an empty net.

Dias, looking at the floor, made the Italian pinched-fingers gesture (‘Che vuoi?’ — What do you want?). It might have been rhetorical and an expression of disbelief, but summed up the abundance of questions and lack of answers City currently have about their game-management problems.

Even with 10 outfielders behind the ball away to Arsenal, they were carved apart because they were too loose.

Omar Marmoush does not get close enough to Myles Lewis-Skelly, who receives Declan Rice’s inside pass. Kovacic is doing little to protect his back line, too.

Lewis-Skelly collects the ball, turns and dribbles. There are three City players around him but no attempts to tackle. Stones defends particularly poorly here, retreating and then spreading to try to block the shot, unsighting Ederson in the process. City’s goalkeeper gets a hand to a pretty central effort but can only push it in off the post.

Brighton & Hove Albion exploited City’s passive mid-block with a second-half formation tweak at the Amex in November. They turned a half-time deficit into a 2-1 win with two goals in five minutes.

Guardiola makes little effort to justify any of these collapses, but has fairly pointed out that Brighton, Brentford, PSG and Sporting are all difficult away trips.

Arne Slot’s Liverpool are the only Premier League side not to concede twice within 10 minutes at least once this season. “(You) have to kill that momentum as much as you can, and not give away anything,” Slot said of title-chasing teams in away games, after Liverpool’s 5-0 win at West Ham in December.

However, City’s out-of-possession flaws also underpinned late home collapses against Feyenoord in November (three conceded in 15 minutes to draw 3-3 from three up) and Manchester United a couple of weeks later (goals in the 88th and 90th minutes meant they lost the derby, 2-1). Both games featured the disastrous combination of an aggressive defensive line and insufficient pressure on the ball.

United’s winner was the most egregious, particularly as Lisandro Martinez had played a near-identical ball in behind for Rasmus Hojlund earlier in the half. City simply didn’t learn.

Their mid-block was compact but there was no pressure on United. Bernardo, on as a substitute, was unsure whether to press Martinez or wait to track the run of Bruno Fernandes, who had rotated wide. Here, Haaland is gesticulating for Bernardo to press.

But he sticks with Fernandes and an overdue press eventually comes from Foden.

United’s runs are well timed and Martinez weights the ball over the top excellently. Nunes is at fault for letting Amad run inside him and onto the ball in behind but is also left one-v-two because of Grealish’s positioning. City’s left-back is trying to defend against not just Amad but also Antony, United’s advancing right wing-back.

To complete the set of City players caught between decisions, Ederson holds his high starting position but does not advance further to sweep up. The ball drops in the box, with plenty of backspin, and Amad reacts excellently to hook it around the goalkeeper and finish from a narrow angle.

This season, when ahead, City allow Premier League opponents 12.7 passes before making a defensive action. That’s almost two passes more than last season and there are 11 sides among the division’s other 19 defending more intensively, which helps explain why City are rarely seen pressing from a mid-block and pushing opponents backwards. Arsenal, for comparison, do this fantastically.

City’s defensive flaws increase the sweeper-keeper demands on Ederson. His per-game frequency (1.8) and distance of actions (23.9 metres) outside of the penalty area are at his highest rates since 2021-22, when they were 1.5 and 25.3.

The clearest example of the time and space City allow teams is the evolution in opposition long pass (defined as 35-plus yards) share and overall pass completion. There are two caveats here — that these metrics are loosely (negatively) correlated, and the goal-kick law change ahead of 2019-20 facilitated more short build-up — but City have been trending towards more risk-averse approaches under Guardiola for years.

In 2018-19, their Premier League opponents hit 18.3 per cent of passes long and only completed 74.6 per cent of total passes. In 2024-25, those numbers are 11.9 and 84.5. Teams either have the talent or believe they have the talent to beat City these days by playing, to steal a Guardiola phrase.

(Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)

Tactical problems, with the high line especially, are exacerbated by a lack of defensive consistency. City have fielded seven different centre-back pairings in their past 13 games, with eight different players lining up in central defence during Premier League matches.

The absence of Dias over three different periods has been significant. He is on track to play his fewest minutes in a league season since joining the club in summer 2020 and they do not have an alternative on Dias’ level. It is why they have been so vulnerable to crosses and dropped off in winning duels.

“At 0-2 we had to close it, but to close it, we don’t have a specific player to defend a result in the box,” Guardiola said after that draw with Brentford. “We had to do it with the ball, and control and create in the final third.” He added that City did not have a midfielder with the “skills” to defend their penalty area either.

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Speaking to broadcaster Amazon Prime after the Madrid defeat, Stones berated the fact that City “had a great opportunity to go to the Bernabeu 2-1 up, and we’ve come away needing a goal to get level (in the tie)”. Really, City collapsing at the finish on Tuesday was emblematic of the problems that landed them in the play-off round, via finishing just 22nd in the 36-team league phase, in the first place.

Guardiola’s side must do what they can to turn that second leg next Wednesday from an occasion into a game — especially against Carlo Ancelotti’s Madrid, the masters of momentum.

The Bernabeu is one ground where City have looked especially mortal on recent visits, having conceded twice in quick succession at the start of a quarter-final’s first leg last season. They also famously collapsed there in April 2022, when Madrid scored three goals across the final minute of the 90, second-half stoppage-time and the first five minutes of extra time to win a semi-final City looked to have wrapped up.

If City are to make anything from their current season, domestically or in Europe, they must relearn the art of game management.

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(Top photo: Martin Rickett/PA Images via Getty Images)