Why do Man City keep losing leads? Is it physical or mental?

Impossible. That is how Pep Guardiola had described the task of controlling Real Madrid’s attackers for 90 minutes. As it was, it was a 92nd-minute goal that consigned Manchester City to defeat as the European champions came from behind late on.

Had City been able to hold on for victory over Real Madrid at the Etihad Stadium, they would still have been a long way from progressing to the next round of the Champions League. But it would have at least boosted their belief. Instead, it happened again.

Brahim Diaz’s late equaliser was bad enough, coming after a slack pass by Ederson when there was, according to Guardiola, no danger. But the sloppiness that preceded Jude Bellingham’s winner was deflating. Anger and frustration as John Stones put it.

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“It has happened many, many times,” said Guardiola afterwards. “In many games this season we have given goals away. It has happened many times and that is why it is difficult.” It undermined them on the night as it has undermined them all season.

That extraordinary evening against Feyenoord when City lost a three-goal lead. Being beaten 4-2 to by Paris Saint-Germain when leading after an hour. And now this, the most explicable given the talent within that Madrid forward line but the most crushing too.

Why does this keep happening? Individual decisions were part of the problem as it unravelled against Madrid. “He cost his team the game,” said Sky Sports’ Jamie Carragher of Ederson when speaking on CBS. But he was not alone in his culpability.

If Mateo Kovacic had been brought on to shore things up, he did anything but. The Croatian was beaten to the ball by Diaz for Madrid’s second goal and put Rico Lewis in trouble for the third. The young defender still needed to be stronger in that situation.

But Guardiola is probably right to say this is not about any individuals. How he must wish it were that simple. There is a malaise at City, a team that has become noticeably weaker physically and perhaps now psychologically as the blows take their toll.

Madrid were the team with defensive problems on paper, Carlo Ancelotti describing the situation as an emergency because of the absence of five senior players at the back, but it was City whose vulnerability in defence was the story of the game in the end.

His team selection mitigated the risk the best he could. Guardiola named all five of his senior defenders, all of them arguably natural centre-backs. Manuel Akanji and Josko Gvardiol took on full-back duties. Stones stepped into midfield. He sought control.

For a while, they were right there with Madrid, almost justifying Ancelotti’s surprising pre-match claim that the winner of this tie would go on to win the competition. When Erling Haaland was on the ball inside the opposition box it was tempting to believe it.

Big games always define big teams and the pitch in Manchester was packed with players who had shown before that they relish such occasions. But as City found at Arsenal recently, it is not as straightforward as finding form with the flick of a switch.

They are in danger of becoming a moments team, still capable of displaying the fast feet that saw Phil Foden win the penalty that restored their advantage. But just as likely to make the mistakes that saw the game taken away from them so swiftly at the death.

Guardiola knows that his team must cut out those errors, but he knows too that it is not just that. It would be naïve to think this was all about some loose play late on. There is more going on here, a team that is not functioning as it did. The statistics bear that out.

City had 33 shots on the night that Madrid knocked them out last season. This time, they managed a third of that, but more worryingly they conceded 20 shots on their goal. That is the most by City in a home Champions League tie since Guardiola took over.

Indeed, it is the second most by them in a Champions League tie anywhere in that time. The record? That was set just three weeks ago in Paris. Too open now, too easy to play through. They rode their luck for 85 minutes but it caught up with them eventually.

Catching up with them. That is how this feels. The demands of competing at the top end for so long, key players growing old together, new ones unable to take up the mantle of responsibility. There is only so much tactical tinkering that Guardiola can do.

“It can only be a physical or mental thing. Physically, they cannot play for 90 minutes now,” said Carragher. “They have not got the legs in the team from minute one to minute 90, but it really shows itself up when you get into the latter stages of the game.”

The decline in City’s intensity in winning the ball back can be traced back years. In the 2021/22 season, they ranked third in the Premier League for the fewest opposition passes allowed per defensive action. The next year that ranking dropped to seventh.

Last season, City dropped to ninth on a metric they had topped in each of their first two Premier League title wins under Guardiola. This season, they are down in 12th, a bottom-half team when it comes to winning the ball back for the first time in his reign.

Of course, City were champions as recently as May. This dip did not seem so significant then. But it is all linked. “We have won a lot because we have been very disciplined in all the defensive phases but not so much this year,” said Guardiola this week.

Gradually, then suddenly, it has become a major problem.

The effort is still there. Savinho pumping his fist at the crowd when celebrating a tackle, Stones being aggressive, Gvardiol sliding in, Nathan Ake throwing himself at the ball to block the shots. “They want it,” conceded Guardiola. “But they are not stable.”

His success was built on that stability. While Guardiola never knew that his team would win, he always knew it would look like it was his team, playing his football. It is no longer obvious. “I like to feel week by week that we are there. I don’t know,” he conceded.

He had praised his players after squeezing past Leyton Orient in the FA Cup, but this was not Brisbane Road, this was the boys from the Bernabeu and baby steps were never likely to cut it when giant leaps forward are now required from this group of players.

The test for Madrid, league leaders in Spain, was to play the opposition in front of them, rather than the memory of their tussles past. Ancelotti’s template in recent years has been to come to contain, but there were open wounds worth poking at this time.

City have already conceded more goals in total this season than in the whole of last. Most damningly, 20 have come after the 75-minute mark, an indication that the team once famous for turning games their way late on have become a side that fades.

So it proved again. A team in transition unable to control transitions. A team trying to win a tie over 180 minutes when they cannot keep going for 90. Guardiola’s rebuild may have begun but doing so on the fly against Real Madrid was too much. Impossible, even.