Seven straight wins, then three straight defeats. Enzo Maresca's first autumn at Manchester City has swung from a club record to a full-blown wobble, and the international break has arrived at about the right moment for him.
City are third, six points behind leaders Arsenal and also behind Brighton. They lost to Aston Villa, Brighton and Nottingham Forest in a row. So what is actually going wrong? BBC Sport put the question to a sports psychologist and to its tactics analyst, and the two answers fit together uncomfortably well.
A squad waiting on a verdict
In September City were found guilty of breaking the Premier League's financial rules. They are appealing, and matches carry on while everyone waits. Dr Paul McCarthy, who has spent 25 years working with clubs in England, Scotland, Germany and France, thinks that hangs over a dressing room more than people admit.
His argument is about control. Uncertainty, he says, is often more stressful than bad news, because players come to training, play their games and know the outcome sits entirely outside their hands. Lose a few matches on top of that and a squad's "collective efficacy", its shared belief that it can do what is needed, starts to shake. Players talk. Rumours spread. It is, in his words, a very reasonable human response.
The timeline at least doesn't contradict him. After the verdict City won their first game back against 10-man Liverpool at Anfield and squeezed past Ipswich at the Etihad. Then the three defeats.
The errors are new
Here is the stat that jumps out. In their first seven games City conceded no goals from individual errors. In the last three, four mistakes have led to goals. They have let in 13 after 10 league games, their worst at this stage since 2008-09, when it was 16.
Anderson and the empty middle
Umir Irfan's tactical read is less about the mind and more about the shape. Maresca has leaned into a 3-1-6 in possession this season, trading a second holding midfielder for an extra attacker, with Elliot Anderson usually the lone sitter after Rodri left in the summer. Anderson is a roaming player by nature. At Forest he pressed high and wide, and he keeps doing it, stepping out to hunt the ball. Clever opponents have noticed and pulled him out of the centre before playing straight through it.
Enzo Fernandez, meanwhile, keeps making forward runs, which can leave City with only two or three players behind the ball when they lose it. Maresca himself said after the Forest defeat that you concede transitions when you lose the ball and do not win duels. Behind all that, Gianluigi Donnarumma is not known for his distribution, and the defenders have made costly errors playing out under pressure.
Losing Rodri and especially Bernardo Silva, who could carry the ball from goal into midfield on his own, has made all of this more visible. Anderson can't do that job single-handed. Irfan suggests Ayyoub Bouaddi, who handled Brazil's press at the World Cup, might. I'd lean towards the tactics as the bigger fix, since Maresca can change a shape in a fortnight but can't make an appeal go away.
Context: Manchester City 3rd in the Premier League, six points behind Arsenal, after three straight defeats (Aston Villa, Brighton, Nottingham Forest). 13 goals conceded in 10 league games. Club appealing a September guilty verdict over Premier League financial rules. Source: BBC Sport (Shamoon Hafez, Umir Irfan).
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