Pep Guardiola only makes such substitutions when the match is won. With Manchester City As they beat Feyenoord 3-0 on Tuesday night, it was time to refresh in a stable environment. But these are not stable times at City and – don’t adjust your sets – nothing seems to be going well.

When Kevin De Bruyne, James McAtee and Jamai Simpson-Pusey came on to get some minutes under their belt as City headed to a well-deserved victory. Erling Haaland had completed a major movement and normal service was about to resume.

They had reached the three-goal threshold which was traditionally Guardiola’s signal to give minutes to players he felt needed an extra helping hand – Kalvin Phillips, Sergio Gomez, Cole Palmer, Matheus Nunes over the past two seasons.

It’s a staple of the Etihad Stadium experience, a sign of normality: City are going to win this game, get ready for a fairly uneventful final 20 minutes. Maybe they’ll score another one, maybe not, but they’ll win.

These assurances, for the moment, belong to the past. Forget everything you thought you knew. City, the team that has won six of the last seven Premier League titles, one of the best teams in history, became the first Champions League team to have a three-goal lead in the 75th minute and not win.

It wasn’t a dream, the match ended 3-3. There were boos at the final whistle! Guardiola was asked about this and he said it was fair. “People don’t come here to remember the successes of the past,” he explains, “they come here to see the team win and perform well.”

He was also asked about the substitutes, but they weren’t the problem, it was everything else.

He was asked about the big scratch on his nose and he said he cut it with his fingernail… which probably also explains everyone else visible in the TV interviews. Either he spent the game tending to a feral cat or he was scratching his head looking for answers.

Given how strange things seem right now, you wouldn’t rule out the cat, but Guardiola has been a headache at the best of times, and these are among the worst.

What answers can we find? There are some very obvious flaws on the pitch that easily explain their recent defeats – for example, the lack of legs in midfield and the ease with which teams can play through them and reach a defense besieged by injuries.

They have played very well at times over these last six matches and were pretty solid for the most part on Tuesday, but it is now clear that the problems run deeper than physical flaws like age or injuries: confidence the team must be put to the test. -low weather.

Even one of the most reliable players this season, Josko Gvardiolgets bogged down, guilty of two goals against Tottenham on the weekend and two goals on Tuesday.

“We have lost a lot of games lately, we are fragile and of course we needed a win, the match was good for the confidence,” Guardiola said. “We were playing at a good level but the first time something happened we had problems.”

Feyenoord, after equalizing, ran towards their own half for fear of City’s punch and for the sake of fairness. Jack Grealish hit the crossbar, but the Dutch were so – understandably – keen to hold on to their point that they didn’t seem to realize they could have had even more if they did. ‘had wanted.

And then Anfield, where even City’s most invincible teams have struggled over the years. Granted, it was against a slightly more ruthless beast in Jurgen Klopp’s film. Liverpoolbut what Arne Slot’s side lack in chaos they make up for in control, and that is, after all, what Guardiola’s great teams have been based on. In fact, it was all about control, but that’s something they just can’t handle now.

“We were a team that always conceded few, few goals in these eight or nine years, we were so stable in the matches, we controlled, we defended well, and now that will not happen,” lamented Guardiola . “We can’t close out games and every time they came, they scored.”

This leaves City in the sort of situation they have been able to relax and enjoy from their sofas in recent years, when Manchester United were in the depths of a crisis and had to find something against Liverpool. The whole world has, not always correctly, observed and predicted double-digit scores.

It will be a crumb of comfort to City fans that United still have plenty of problems, but suddenly Guardiola’s players are seen as lambs to be slaughtered.

(Carl Recine/Getty Images)

Guardiola recently argued, rightly, that a drop of this type was inevitable. He was actually amazed that his team kept coming back year after year to continue playing well and winning. He always used to point out that all the other Premier League champions struggled massively the following season, and it turns out they all did. United, Chelsea, Leicestereven Liverpool finished well off the pace. Even City, before Guardiola woke up.

They were always going to have a bad run considering the number of games they’ve played over the past few years, not to mention their intensity, but surely no one expected something like this?

Liverpool are the worst possible opponents this weekend, but it’s no exaggeration to suggest that games against Nottingham Forest, Crystal Palace (away), United and Villa Aston (absent) before Christmas will itself pose some problems.

And what about the Champions League? Many would have expected City to finish in the top two in this new format, but they now need to win their final three group games to secure a place in the top eight, with teams guaranteed to qualify for the last eight of final. To do this, they must gain Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain, then beat Club Brugge at home.

The city is by no means finished. Guardiola has signed for two more years and, despite the current chaos, no one else would be better placed to put things right. They will be back, if not this season (most likely this season), then next.

But things are likely to get worse, or even worse, before they get better. Forget everything you thought you knew.

(DARREN STAPLES/AFP via Getty Images)