Scoring too few, conceding too many - What has happened to Guardiola's Man City?

What has happened to Manchester City’s consistency?

That is a question that has left even Pep Guardiola scrambling for an answer .

How can a team thrash runaway leaders Liverpool 4-0 and three days later lose to Southampton without scoring ?

How can a team that won 14 successive games to claim the title with 98 points, one season after a record 18 consecutive victories and total of 100 points, now no longer win more than three Premier League matches on the trot?

How can a team win away to Real Madrid, top of La Liga, but lose at Norwich City, bottom of the Premier League?

The City boss explains it as a very simple equation - not taking enough chances and conceding too many from the few opportunities given up.

Finding a solution is proving harder. Guardiola admits the issue has been there for nearly 11 months and is one that he must find an answer to if they are to put up a more serious challenge to Liverpool next season.

On Sunday, in the 1-0 defeat to Southampton, City failed to score from 26 chances created. When they dropped points for the first time this season in a 2-2 draw at home to Tottenham back in August, they had 24 shots while the visitors had just three.

“I was not able to solve this problem we had since the beginning,” Guardiola admitted before Wednesday’s clash with Newcastle. “It happened in the second game in the league and the last one at Southampton was quite similar.”

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Individual errors have proved expensive all season. Oleksandr Zinchenko's was the latest at St Mary’s when his sloppy mistake led to Che Adams’ brilliant winner.

But as a unit, the defence has never looked settled, with already more goals conceded this season than in the two previous and more defeats than in both campaigns combined .

Aymeric Laporte’s presence was missed for five months after his knee injury as was the leadership of Vincent Kompany, who left in the summer and wasn’t replaced.

John Stones and Nicolas Otamendi have been inconsistent as have full-backs Joao Cancelo, Zinchenko, Angelino and Benjamin Mendy.

It is a situation that will not be allowed to continue into the new season. A new centre-back is at the top of Guardiola’s wanted list with Napoli’s Kalidou Koulibaly among a number of potential targets to counter the problem.

But it’s at the other end where Guardiola is most puzzled. Without the reliable Sergio Aguero, who is in a race to be fit for the end of season mini-Champions League, goals have not come as easily as they previously did.

No side in the Premier League have missed more ‘big chances’ with City's 74 considerably more than Liverpool’s 56. They have scored more goals than any other team, but have lost 11 points from the four games in which they failed to score. City have drawn a blank in front of goal the same number of times as the previous two seasons combined.

Striker Gabriel Jesus is the most obvious example of a player struggling in front of goal, having failed to score since football restarted after the Covid-19 shutdown. Indeed the Brazilian hasn’t scored in his nine appearances since the equaliser in the 2-1 Champions League win over Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu in February.

But he is not the only one to suffer a drought this season. Raheem Sterling has passed 20 goals for a third consecutive season but went on his worst run in three years between the start of the year and the opening goal of Project Restart - a total of 12 matches without hitting the net.

Goals have not materialised from other usual areas. Of the forwards and attacking midfielders, Bernardo Silva has scored once in the Premier League since September, David Silva and Ilkay Gundogan have one league goal each since October while Leroy Sane played all-but 11 minutes because of injury before his transfer to Bayern Munich was confirmed.

Failure to score has been as problematic as the defensive issues and, with the FA Cup and Champions League still to play for, Guardiola knows he needs to find an answer in the next few weeks although he was flippant with his initial response on how to address the problem.

“The only solution when you create 26 chances and have 26 shots - you have to do 35. And if 35 is not enough to do 40. And if 40 is not enough you have to do 45,” he said.

“When we play teams in the way we play it, we create more and create more and create more and try to concede as less as possible.

“We have to review the goals we concede - we give them [away] and we have to try to avoid it. If you want to get to the final of the FA Cup and go through the Champions League, we must improve on this detail - to give the opponents a fight and [make them] do good things to score goals, not give them [away] or we will be not able to reach the next step.”

Scoring too few and conceding too many. The problem is simple but even for the greatest coach in world football, coming up with an answer is considerably harder.