Missing in action during the past six torrid weeks: Manchester City’s pizzazz. It was absent here again, in the latest moping performance that has become the recognisable face of Pep Guardiola’s formerly supreme team.
There is now a surreal element about City’s plunge. Sides go on losing runs – sure they do – but for this champion group to lose for a seventh time in 10 games and extend their disturbing run to a meagre solitary victory in the sequence is baffling.
