Man City's 'collapse' has many factors, but Guardiola

A couple of weeks into this season, fresh off a combined 198 points over the past two Premier League campaigns: I wrote the following words: "The natural order of things is a City win; anything else is an aberration." Well, four months later, there have been plenty of aberrations. Six of 'em, in fact, as City are sporting an 11-2-4 record through 17 league matches. Not only are they 14 points behind first-place Liverpool, but they're four points back of their opponent this weekend, second-place Leicester City, whose best player (Riyad Mahrez) they purchased a little over a year ago https://www.w88thais.com/w88-promotion-latest-for-new-member-get-free-260-bath/ .
So: is this the new normal? Are cats and dogs actually supposed to live with each other? Or are the first 17 games of the season just a finicky branch stuck in the gears, a minor impediment that eventually gets crunched by the inevitability of the Manchester machine?

To answer those questions, let's take a look at what's gone wrong.



Injuries
Who knew? It turns out that even a team with impossible depth and a near-endless well of sovereign-wealth-fund resources can succumb to the frailties of the human body w88thais.com .

The first one came in August, when Leroy Sane tore his ACL in a glorified exhibition game against the team that's currently in first place. The 23-year-old German started only 21 league games and didn't even reach 2,000 league minutes last year, but he was absolutely devastating when he played. Among players featured for at least half of their team's Premier League minutes, Sane was second in the league in non-penalty goals+assists per 90 minutes (0.96) behind his City teammate, Sergio Aguero (0.98).

Speaking of Aguero... he has been out since the end of November with a thigh injury. The 31-year-old Argentine has been as good as ever when he has played, but he's only started seven league matches. On a per-minute basis, Aguero and Sane were the two most productive attacking players in the league last season; combined, they've played 813 league minutes this year. No team -- not even one with Raheem Sterling, Riyad Mahrez, David Silva, Bernardo Silva... [deep breath] ... Kevin De Bruyne, Gabriel Jesus and Phil Foden -- can lose that much offensive firepower without experiencing at least a minor drop off w88 line .

There were two constants to Man City's second title in a row in 2018-19: Ederson and Aymeric Laporte. Their keeper played every single minute in the Premier League. He has missed one game due to injury this season, and of course, it came in the team's toughest fixture of the season -- away at Anfield. Perhaps not coincidentally, Liverpool scored with three of their five shots on target en route to a 3-1 victory.

Laporte, meanwhile, played more minutes than any outfield player for City last season, starting 34 matches and breaking the 3,000-minute barrier. He led the team in passes completed into the final-third, per the site FBRef. While he was on the field, City's goal differential was plus-67, a mark matched by only one other non-keeper in the league: Player of the Year winner Virgil van Dijk. Yet while Liverpool have had van Dijk for all but five league minutes this season, Laporte has played only four games thanks to a knee injury suffered at the end of August. He'll be out until at least the New Year.