Muddled Man City must find united front to solve growing issue

There were plenty of brutal headlines in the Italian news stands on Thursday mornings, yet the most cutting came back in England after another Manchester City collapse.

'Juve teach Pep a lesson,' read one Italian sports paper. 'Juve sinks Pep', another. 'Bianconeri take advantage of City's serious crisis', 'Juventus control the tempo, then strike'. '[Dusan] Vlahovic and [Weston] McKennie demolish City.'

Pep Guardiola showed off his fluent Italian this week so he won't be able to ignore the negative jibes aimed in his direction in Turin. Back home, too, City's defeat was plastered on the back pages as a 'Weston Super Mare'. More damning, one headline was the ruthless: 'Old Lady 2 Old Men 0.'

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This is the underlying problem that City have put off because they have won so much. This is no longer about the injury crisis and Guardiola is no longer interested in using that as an excuse. At the Allianz Stadium, they had Ederson, Kyle Walker, Ruben Dias, Ilkay Gundogan, Bernardo Silva, Jack Grealish and Kevin De Bruyne in the starting line up. Hardly inexperienced, and a team packed full of leaders.

The five members of the six-strong captaincy group on the pitch on Wednesday all had different methods of reacting to the latest setback, each similar but slightly different to the manager. Guardiola insists the turn will come through going back to basics. Ilkay Gundogan says it's a confidence issue, but his manager disagrees.

Gundogan went on to challenge his teammates to look at themselves. “I feel we know exactly what is going wrong," he said. "We