Manchester City crisis renewed in cataclysmic defeat which leaves them on Champions League brink

Manchester City are about to be eliminated from the easiest Champions League group ever. Their collapse against Paris Saint-Germain was one of the worst yet.
If the still slightly relatively inaccessible Champions League table did not tell the story emphatically enough, a rundown of the world’s biggest spenders in the 2025 January transfer window forced the point home like a Joao Neves diving header at the back post: neither Paris Saint-Germain nor Manchester City are happy with their lot and are uniquely placed to do something about it.
The circumstances are different. PSG sensed an opportunity for a long-term target and took it; the ineligible Khvicha Kvaratskhelia watched this victory from the stands but will have been given hope of a reprieve in the knockout phase as the month’s most expensive signing.
He would do well to overcome the competition for places because the version of PSG’s attack on display at the Parc des Princes on Wednesday evening is something else. Manchester City spent almost £250m on their starting goalkeeper and defence and might have felt ripped off at being charged one tenth of that.
Ederson is a reflection of a shadow of his former self and the decision to keep him this summer looks like the latest transfer mistake in a painfully long line. His distribution was diabolical and his shot-stopping non-existent.
Matheus Nunes is not a right-back but also fundamentally not a player of the requisite Manchester City quality, regardless of position.
Manuel Akanji would be running on fumes if he didn’t slow down to a laboured jog for mercifully offside PSG opener.
Josko Gvardiol cleared one off the line but did also inexplicably set up the fourth goal.
Ruben Dias escapes with a pass on this occasion, this game bursting into ludicrous life once he was taken off after a goalless first half.
Even the defensive substitutes poured petrol on the fire, John Stones coming on to make his first action a missed header so Neves could convert a free-kick Rico Lewis conceded with a handball.
It is why more than £60m has been spent on defenders as the first part of a protracted rebuild. But there is unthinkable pressure on 20-year-old Abdukodir Khusanov to settle after not even a full season of top-flight professional football outside Belarus, and teenage Vitor Reis following his first move outside of Brazil.
The bar is low but there is every chance they are dragged into and consumed by this mess rather than helping clean it up.
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There were positives for Manchester City: a first non-penalty goal since December 2023 for Jack Grealish; another notch on the Erling Haaland bedpost; and that’s it. This was a must-win game they led 2-0 and lost 4-2, the ninth match this season they have led in before either drawing or losing. In the Champions League alone it’s probably only their third-worst capitulation and that is damning considering just how cataclysmic this was.
Kevin de Bruyne spent most of his 70 minutes advising Nunes on where to position himself, and the Belgian’s early substitution when such a crucial fixture was level spoke deafening volumes. Savinho, a rare recent silver lining to the dark cloud, was taken off at half-time after losing possession one too many times. Nunes was embarrassed for the first goal and Mateo Kovacic culpable for the second, while Bernardo Silva endured the humiliation of being nutmegged by Ousmane Dembele before the Frenchman nearly shattered the crossbar.
PSG were irresistible for most of the second half, rendering a two-goal lead established in three minutes moot within seven and not relenting at any point thereafter. Ederson started to go long but it just came right back. Manchester City began to crumble under constant attacks at pace, as if Luis Enrique had drafted in Jamie Vardy as a coach specifically for this game.
The last 22 signings PSG have made for a fee were no older than 27, and the vast majority were far younger. Lee Kang-in (23), Bradley Barcola (22) and Desire Doue (19) tore Manchester City to shreds with Goncalo Ramos (23) applying the killer blow and Joao Neves (20) running the midfield.
It offered a glimpse into what Manchester City know they need to do. “I don’t know now, I don’t know in the summer, I don’t know the next seasons but in the next two or three transfer windows the club has to do it for the question of age,” Guardiola said before adding Khusanov and Reis to his squad, having belatedly recognised the risk of a core containing “ten, eleven players more than 30”.
Omar Marmoush (25) will tick another box when he joins from Frankfurt but for as long as the midfield remains untouched, anything Manchester City try to do is built on quicksand. Kovacic is not good enough in the holding role, Silva has been engulfed in the flames and Ilkay Gundogan was predictably anonymous in his cameo. Rodri deserves a knighthood for holding this together and Kalvin Phillips can quite justifiably ask why he has taken so much of the heat off the truly dreadful Nunes when it comes to assessing Manchester City’s worst signings.
The suggestion is Douglas Luiz could return to the Etihad in a deal seemingly designed to infuriate Aston Villa but Manchester City need just so much more and their track record of midfield signings is atrocious.
The Premier League title has gone and even qualification from a Champions League group-stage format explicitly designed to make progression for the elite easier is out of their control.
Perhaps putting 20 goals past Leicester, Ipswich, Salford and Julen Lopetegui’s West Ham did not indicate Manchester City are back; their tendency to collapse any time they face an opponent in any way competent certainly suggests otherwise.