‘We will improve’ - Pep Guardiola can’t overlook major Man City issue after seven league games

Pep Guardiola turned and frantically screamed down the line: “John! John! Now.”

It was the cry of a man desperately looking for answers as Fulham missed yet another great chance.

Rarely are Manchester City cut open so easily, or concede so many big chances at home. The Premier League champions may have emerged from Saturday’s encounter against Fulham with a 3-2 win, but the opposition’s xG of 2.36 told its own story. Fulham were hugely disappointed to head back with nothing from a hard-fought display at the Etihad.

“We have to be really unhappy with the result,” Marco Silva said after the game. “That’s the first thing and it’s a feeling that we all share in our dressing room.

“Looking at the chances that we did create throughout the game and comparing with City, we deserved more. But that’s football.”

For City, it wasn’t the number of chances conceded that was alarming, with the visitors managing just four efforts on target, but the quality of those openings should cause concern. Adama Traore could have headed home with the match ball on another occasion, with the winger handed three clear-cut chances. That he failed to convert any explains why the one-time Barcelona star is now playing for a mid-table Premier League side.

For the first attempt he shook off Rico Lewis but fired straight at Ederson, before he skied an effort over the bar 12 minutes later, at the end of a rapid Fulham breakaway. The third effort was perhaps the easiest of the lot, but the 28-year-old again failed to direct his shot away from Ederson’s frame after leaving a trail of sky-blue shirts in his wake.

There were other chances too for the London side, who took the lead in the 26th minute at the Etihad via a ludicrously soft goal, as Manuel Akanji failed to track the run of Andreas Pereira, allowing the former Manchester United man to poke the ball in from a few yards out.

It continues a worrying defensive trend for City, who have fallen behind in three of their four home league games this season and trailed at some point in all four. The Blues haven’t kept a clean sheet since the opening weekend of the season and there’s a sense of vulnerability at times to Guardiola’s peerless pros.

Thankfully, City have netted enough goals at the other end to win games this season, typically via Erling Haaland, although on Saturday afternoon it was a Mateo Kovacic double and a late Jeremy Doku piledriver that sealed the points.

But even as City extended their unbeaten league run to 30 games, Guardiola must know that sturdier defensive showings will be needed if they’re to get near Arsenal’s 48-game record.

John Stones, introduced late on, was at fault for Fulham’s second goal of the afternoon. The England international failed to stick tightly to Rodrigo Muniz, and the Brazilian had ample time inside the box to powerfully strike the ball into the back of the net, ensuring it was a nervous ending at the Etihad.

Under Guardiola, City have never been impenetrable, and there has always been a risk of being exposed on the break. The antidote has often been Kyle Walker, with Guardiola relying on his pace to mop up behind. Yet, with the City skipper now 34, it’s a solution that may need to be reimagined as the season goes on.

The England international has started slowly this campaign and was culpable for goals against Arsenal and Newcastle United in the last two league games. City fans have not been impressed, and there’s a growing sense that age is finally taking its toll on one of the most reliable players of the Guardiola era.

“I don’t have any doubts about Kyle, about his physicality,” Guardiola said ahead of the Fulham game, which incidentally was Walker’s 400th in the Premier League. “He’s focused on what he has to do.

“Only a few people can do this – how many games you have to play, how few injuries, how consistent. His physicality is not normal.”

Those words were less convincing as Traore motored past Walker late on against Fulham. He may be one of the fastest attackers in the league - Guardiola even referred to Traore as ‘unstoppable’ after the game - but it’s never been an issue for Walker in the past. The former Tottenham Hotspur man being outpaced by anyone is undeniable proof that he is, at last, slowing down.

That Rico Lewis started at right-back and feels a more vital cog in the Guardiola machine is also telling, although the teenager also looked overawed at the prospect of trying to stop Traore, and the Spaniard skipped by him for the first of his third gilt-edge chances.

The decision to introduce Walker at centre-back also felt peculiar, something Guardiola wouldn’t have done even 12 months ago. But he quickly realised that plan wasn’t working as Fulham missed another opportunity.

His frantic screams of ‘John! John!’ soon resulted in Stones lining up at the heart of defence, with Walker shuffling out to his preferred position on the flank.

Regardless, Guardiola needs to find a way of reworking his back four, especially with the absence of their midfield buffer in Rodri. Not that he seemed overly concerned after the match.

“Of course it is not nice when you come back from 0-1, but we created the chances to go 1-0 or 2-0 in the first minutes of the game and every game that happened,” he said. “But sometimes I give credit - the first goal, who expected [Raul] Jimenez to do this incredible touch?

“Why don't we give credit to them rather than be definitively bad? Yeah, there are actions that you have to defend better, but step by step we will improve.”

After seven games, Guardiola has plenty of reason to feel optimistic; his side are unbeaten and sit second in the table ahead of a kind run of four fixtures that feature none of the current top nine.

Yet, he can’t escape the fact that having the same number of clean sheets as Ipswich Town and Leicester City at this stage of the campaign is a genuine cause for concern.