Who's most to blame for Man City's Champions League woes? Six biggest reasons for Pep Guardiola & co are facing embarrassing early elimination

The Champions League reboot has proved a real shock to City's system, particularly as they were so dominant in the previous group stage. They won six games out of six last season and had finished top of their group for seven consecutive campaigns, often securing their place in the knockout phase with one game to spare, if not two.

Indeed, City's passage from the group stage was generally so routine that even their fans were not fussed about going to games. There were 16,000 empty seats at the Etihad Stadium for a 2021 match with RB Leipzig, prompting a telling off from Guardiola towards those who had stayed away.

This time around, though, Guardiola's side got a tough draw compared to some of their rivals, as they were paired with three European titans in PSG, Juve and Inter, facing the former two away from home. By contrast, Liverpool got to play two of their hardest games, against Bayer Leverkusen and Real Madrid, at Anfield.

Timing has not been on City's side either. They visited Sporting CP when the team was at their peak under Ruben Amorim and were subsequently destroyed in the second half, losing 4-1. Arsenal, meanwhile, headed to Lisbon a couple of weeks later when the hapless Joao Pereira was in charge and won 5-1.

There is no hiding from the fact that Ederson has had a terrible Champions League campaign. The only game he performed well in was the opening 0-0 draw with Inter while he sat out the only two games City have won, against Slovan Bratislava and Sparta Prague, before then returning to the team against Sporting CP, when he conceded four goals, including when he was sat down by Viktor Gyokeres for Sporting's equaliser before letting Maximiliano Araujo's strike through his legs.

His performance against Feyenoord three weeks later was truly awful as he was at least partly responsible for the three goals City shipped in the final 15 minutes to draw 3-3. That performance led to Ederson being dropped for the next three league games, although he was back in the team for the trip to Juventus. However, he only underlined exactly why he had been removed from the line up in the first place by spilling Dusan Vlahovic's header over the line.

On Wednesday, Ederson was soft for PSG's second and third goals, and Guardiola must decide whether or not to keep the faith for the do-or-die game against Brugge or turn to Stefan Ortega, who he was furious with after the recent game at Brentford.

City's midfield lynchpin Rodri played just one game in the Champions League, the opener against Inter. He suffered his season-ending injury in the very next fixture against Arsenal, which was cruel timing given in his press conference before facing Inter he had warned about the threat the increased number of matches posed to player welfare.

City were unbeaten for the previous two seasons in the Champions League when Rodri was on the pitch, but without the Ballon d'Or winner they suddenly looked vulnerable, unable to control games as before. They have missed his passing vision, his power and his energy, and all attempts to compensate for his absence, such as playing Mateo Kovacic and Bernardo Silva in a double-pivot or having Ilkay Gundogan anchor the midfield on his own, have not worked.

The lack of a proper holding midfielder was achingly obvious in Paris as Luis Enrique's side out-ran City through the middle, allowing Bradley Barcola and Ousmane Dembele to do damage down the wings.

Rodri is not the only player City have missed at crucial moments in their European campaign. Defensive leader Ruben Dias missed the games against Sporting and Feyenoord while he asked to be substituted at half-time in Paris due to injury. It is no coincidence that in those 225 minutes without the towering Portuguese, City have conceded 11 goals.

John Stones and Nathan Ake have also been missing for much of the campaign, forcing Guardiola to shuffle his pack and field Josko Gvardiol at centre-back, Rico Lewis at left-back and Matheus Nunes at right-back. None of the players have coped well with playing out of their usual positions, with Gvardiol and Nunes giving away penalties in Lisbon.

The shortages forced the coach to hand 19-year-old Jahmai Simpson-Pusey his debut against Sporting and the defender - who Guardiola simply referred to as "the young lad" - looked completely out of his depth. Given how porous they have been with their makeshift defence, City will be praying that Dias can recover from his setback to face Brugge.

Gary Neville said last year that City "don't give you twists", and at the time it was clear what he meant. When Guardiola's side got their noses in front, either in a match or in a title race, they rarely looked back. However, this City are now synonymous with capitulations, particularly in the Champions League.

They have given up eight points from winning positions, leaking goals at an alarming rate. They took an early lead at Sporting only to concede three times in the space of 12 minutes; they surrendered their 3-0 advantage at home to Feyenoord in the closing stages; and then in Paris it took just 25 minutes for them to go from being 2-0 up to 3-2 down

"It's happened too many times this season, when we've gone one goal, two goals up, even three against Feyenoord, and we've not been able to control the game and see it out," said Jack Grealish on Wednesday. "It's weird because in every other season we've been so good in these moments, managing the game.

"I don't know if it's a confidence thing, because we know for most of this season, especially before Christmas time, we weren't really at the levels that we know we can. We have so many players on the pitch when we go 2-0 up that are so good with the ball at keeping it. But we've not been doing that recently and that's down to ourselves."

City's defence, slow midfield and error-prone Ederson are the not the only ones to blame for the precarious situation they find themselves in. The team's attack have also missed plenty of chances to put various games to bed. And as tends to happen in the Champions League, they have been made to pay a heavy price for their wastefulness.

It should not be forgotten that they looked utterly dominant in the first half-hour against Sporting, and they ended that game with 72 percent possession having had 20 shots. But crucially, Sporting matched their six attempts on target and were much more ruthless in front of goal. City should have been out of sight long before Gyokeres' equaliser that night while Erling Haaland hit the bar from the penalty spot which would have reduced the deficit from two goals to one.

It was a similar story against Feyenoord, when City had 18 shots on goal, nine of which were on target, and against Juve, when they had more attempts than the Italians but couldn't find the net.