Manchester City's playing group has hastily withdrawn from the Allianz Stadium. Light-hearted as always; these players have always managed to bypass the opposition.
“You're welcome, but I can't do it,” were the replies to reporters who asked for a short word to dissect the 2-0 defeat at Juventus, which put them in a difficult position in the Champions League and did nothing for the swirling sound of a crisis.
It's derby week in Manchester. Pep Guardiola's side have lost seven of their last 10 games and are throwing games away with alarming abandon. City supporters deserve to hear from senior players, away from carefully crafted platitudes on social media.
In fact, no one from the squad was present, apart from doing contractual TV interviews. Not club captain Kyle Walker, nor any of the other 'captains' within the leadership group.
It was left to Guardiola to publicly defend them again, and the Catalan's adept in that regard. He said he was happy with the way City performed (in fairness they weren't bad for most of the evening) and turned the attention to himself. These players are lucky to have him, really.
Makes you wonder where the leadership has gone over the last six weeks. The determination and stubbornness with which City achieved result after result towards the end of last season, when their style was not sparkling, has been replaced by a rather docile and weak backbone.
Heads drop when things go against them. Collective grimly accepting shrug. City has never been that way under Guardiola.
That will be the bad thing for the manager after Juventus: they had carried out his instructions quite well until the first sign of trouble. The same can be said during disappointing results against Brighton and Feyenoord. This is clearly not a talent problem.
Kevin De Bruyne, Ruben Dias, Bernardo Silva and Ilkay Gundogan are under Walker in the captaincy and this side, so renowned for its steadfastness, now deserves scrutiny of its core.
Dias recently spoke earlier this week about how the bad days or months will define City's legacy and while he firmly believes Dias is a motivation junkie, it is questionable whether that is the view of many others in the dressing room.
The less experienced heads, especially Rico Lewis, are carrying the burden and that is simply the wrong direction. Gundogan actually started the pre-match team talk while Walker was still spraying water into the Italian air, as is his ritual. That lack of cohesion is currently radiating from all of them.
Guardiola has rightly pointed to injuries during this torturous period, while he wants a new central midfielder in January – be it Martin Zubimendi, Ederson or Bruno Guimaraes. Everyone will do it at this point. Anyone with a pair of legs that moves as fast as Walker did when he went to see that coach on Wednesday night.
Right-back will certainly be high on the agenda this summer as Walker enters the final twelve months of his contract. It looked like Guardiola would phase out the England international towards the end of the Treble season. Walker was no longer an automatic choice and played just eight minutes in the Champions League final.
Bayern Munich came calling that summer, but City panicked at the amount of experience leaving the door and gave him a three-year contract – plus the armband for good measure.
So Guardiola had been preparing for games without Walker in 2023 and now 2025 approaches, with the 34-year-old proving to have a major defensive problem – a guilty party in both Crystal Palace goals at the weekend and the same again in Turin.
Strolling out to stop a cross for the first time; jogging back and giving Weston McKennie the freedom of Ederson's box for the second time.
These examples of errors are not technical. It is application, desire. Walker has been troubled for a while, but these are fundamental issues that someone with a BBC podcast called You'll Never Beat Kyle Walker shouldn't be making.
In his latest, published on the day of the defeat to Juventus, Walker tells us what Guardiola's office smells like – the manager will be happy – and repeats an old story about pasta created by Riyad Mahrez.
He has won two football matches since the podcast started, three days before losing the FA Cup final to Manchester United. Perhaps a refreshing name change for the new year is in order.
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