Man City embarrassed by Bodo/Glimt: Why Champions League loss might be their worst game under Pep Guardiola

Dom Farrell

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Man City embarrassed by Bodo/Glimt: Why Champions League loss might be their worst game under Pep Guardiola image

Pep Guardiola has had difficult times at Manchester City before. It's nine and a half years since he landed at the Etihad Stadium — that much is inevitable.

The Champions League has thrown up a few of them: a 2018 quarterfinal ransacking at Anfield against Liverpool, an abject collapse at the same stage against Lyon two years later and the limp 1-0 final loss to Chelsea in Porto in 2021.

Back in his first season in charge in 2016/17, an imbalanced City squad shipped four goals at Leicester City and Everton, and it briefly looked as if the maelstrom of English football might subsume the celebrated Barcelona and Bayern Munich coach.

As we know now, six Premier League titles in the space of seven seasons followed, including a record-breaking four in a row between 2020/21 and 2023/24. In 2022/23, City won the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League treble, a feat only previously achieved in English football by Manchester United.

Guardiola's place in the pantheon is secure and those achievements meant he was able to absorb a wretched run in the middle of last season when City won just one of 13 matches across all competitions. That set in motion a hasty rebuild of the first-team squad, and City have spent almost £450 million ($604m) on new players over the past 12 months, while club greats such as Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan, Kyle Walker and Ederson have left the stage.

After all that, a 3-1 loss to Bodo/Glimt, a team without a Champions League win in their history, is not really where City should be landing.

MORE: Why Man City signed Marc Guehi to continue recent spending spree

Why loss to Bodo/Glimt might be worst Man City game under Pep Guardiola

City's humiliation in the Arctic Circle would be bad enough in sub-zero isolation. What makes this arguably Guardiola's worst defeat is his team threw up another contender just four days ago, when a 2-0 defeat to Man United in the derby at Old Trafford massively flattered a wholly incompetent showing.

As was the case during last season's slump, Guardiola is in the grips of an injury crisis in defence. Ruben Dias, Josko Gvardiol, John Stones and Matheus Nunes are all out. Nathan Ake was not fit enough to come off the bench in Bodo, even as youngster Max Alleyne struggled and Rodri was sent off. Alleyne played for the fifth game in succession after being recalled from a loan spell at Championship club Watford.

However, there was still more than enough talent in this expensively rebuilt City team to be able to navigate this game, not to mention a United side that had been at such a low ebb. But for a succession of offside goals disallowed in both games, the scorelines against City could have been massive.

Here are a few of the root issues in their crisis.

MORE: How Michael Carrick's Man United tore through Man City in the derby

Erling Haaland goal drought

Erling Haaland headed back to his homeland after a listless showing in the Manchester derby, where he was substituted 10 minutes before fulltime. He has now scored just once — a penalty against Brighton & Hove Albion on January 7 — in his past eight matches.

The problem for City when Haaland drops below his superhuman scoring levels, never mind drops to a level as painfully ordinary as this, is he doesn't do enough else to be anything other than a problem.

The 25-year-old has improved his all-round play since joining City in 2022, but he is never likely to enhance any slick build-up from the lines of Phil Foden and Rayan Cherki. In a team missing other senior players due to injury, Haaland's main contribution — other than missing a pair of routine chances before halftime — was to flap his arms around and complain to teammates. He needs to do much, much better than whatever this is he's serving up right now.

Lack of leadership

The defence and Guardiola's chosen defensive set-up (more on that below) clearly misses Dias massively. The Portugal centre-back is City's most obvious on-field leader and they tend to wilt without him around.

Club captain Bernardo Silva was suspended for the trip to Norway, meaning Rodri had the armband. The 2024 Ballon d'Or winner's two yellow cards within a minute just after Cherki had pulled a goal back was about as far away from leadership and taking responsibility for a situation as you can imagine.

Young Alleyne was culpable for Bodo's first two goals and City were unable to close ranks around him. At 24 years and 84 days, this was City's youngest-ever Champions League lineup in terms of average age, and it showed. Phil Foden, 25, the one-time boy wonder, is a senior man in all of this. Having got back towards his player-of-the-season form of 2023/24 earlier in the campaign, the England midfielder has gone missing over recent weeks to an unacceptable degree.

Guardiola's tactics

So often City's difference-maker, their manager's schemes look to be holding them back right now.

Previous high-profile Champions League defeats have been attributed to Guardiola trying something out of the ordinary on the big occasion and falling flat on his face. This season, even when they get impressive results such as a 2-1 win at Real Madrid, City's go-to setup looks incredibly vulnerable.

Building on the ploy that got City out of trouble last season, which consisted of packing central areas with midfielder schemers and relying on full-backs to provide width, Guardiola has typically played a 3-1-6 shape in possession this season, with one of those full-backs joining that stacked frontline.

The problem is, if City do not overwhelm the opposition defence and their passing in the final third is not on-point — funnily enough, it wasn't on Bodo/Glimt's artificial surface — they are massively exposed. Even more so when you consider the '1' is Rodri, building his way back from a fitness nightmare.

In Bodo, both full-backs — Rayan Ait-Nouri playing on the wrong side, and Nico O'Reilly — were joining attacks, leaving Alleyne and Abdukodir Khusanov scrambling any time the opposition turned over possession.

Marc Guehi's arrival comes at a handy time, but Guardiola would be throwing the England centre-back to the wolves (City play Wolves this weekend, pun maybe intended?) In this configuration. Once Nico Gonzalez returns to fitness, he should play alongside Rodri in an all-Spanish double-pivot in an attempt to restore order.

Pep Guardiola reaction to Bodo/Glimt defeat

Pep Guardiola's post-match quotes will appear here.

Will Man City qualify for Champions League knockouts?

City remained fourth in the standings after the Bodo/Glimt defeat, but were just one point ahead of Liverpool in ninth.

Depending on results elsewhere on matchweek seven, they are likely to need to beat Galatasaray at home on January 28 to win a place in the top eight and a route straight into the Round of 16.

MORE: Key details on the Round of 16 draw

Where are Bodo/Glimt from?

Bodo/Glimt are based in Bodo, which is the second largest town in Northern Norway and has a population of around 55,000 people. Located above the Arctic Circle, it is more than 500 miles north of Norway's capital city, Oslo.

Founded as Fotballklubben Glimt in 1916, the four-time champions of Norway's Eliteserien changed its name to Bodo/Glimt in 1948.

They play their home games at Aspmyra Stadion, which has a capacity of just 8,270 spectators and uses artificial turf due to the extreme winter weather in the region.

Contributing Writer