It ought to have been over. In previous times, it surely would have been. Erling Haaland had tapped in from close range, shortly after the substitute, Jack Grealish, had broken the deadlock. There were 53 minutes on the clock and Manchester City looked ready to breath fresh life into their ailing Champions League campaign.
And yet the current edition of Pep Guardiola’s serial Premier League champions have come to lack the old certainties. They are serially vulnerable to high-tempo flurries from the opposition. The idea was that they would prove in one of European football’s most pulsating arenas that they were back, having moved on from that horror run of one win in 13 from the end of October. They had won four of their previous five matches.
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