Pep must drop 4/10 Man City dud who was worse than Nunes

A defeat on derby day is always something of a disaster, but Manchester City’s loss to Manchester United yesterday afternoon was something else entirely.

Pep Guardiola’s side are going through a crisis the likes of which they haven’t experienced under the Spanish coach before.

The Citizens have now lost eight of their last 11 games and look a shadow of their former selves, and yesterday was no exception.

There were poor performances across the pitch for the hosts, but two players, including Matheus Nunes, stood out for all the wrong reasons.

Nunes performance vs United

Now, the first thing to say is that much of the blame for Nunes’ poor showing should be shouldered by Guardiola, as injuries to the squad saw him start the Brazilian at left-back, which is a position he had never played before.

With that said, the former Wolverhampton Wanderers’ inexperience cannot be used as an excuse for his lack of impact throughout most of the game nor his costly mistakes at the end.

For example, while the team as a whole must face the blame for losing last night, it was the 26-year-old who gave away the equalising penalty for a foul on Amad Diallo, who had intercepted his lazy backpass.

Then, less than two minutes later, he failed to get back and clear the Ivorian’s match-winning effort off the line despite appearing to have the time to do so.

Unsurprisingly, such a display saw GIVEMESPORT’s Kerrie Jacobs-Bryant award him a 4/10, which seems more than fair considering his mistakes.

However, while Nunes turned a mediocre performance into a disastrous one in the final five minutes, one of his teammates was poor for the entire game and must not start for City again.

The City dud worse than Nunes

Now, as we said earlier, there were underwhelming performances all over the pitch for the hosts last night, but the worst was undoubtedly Kyle Walker.

The City captain has been lacklustre for some time now, but was notably poor yesterday.

The former Tottenham Hotspurs star was utterly ineffective going forward and, like Nunes, was a disaster in defence, strolling into the box for Diallo’s winning goal.

In fact, the most notable thing he did during the game was feign a head injury during his confrontation with Rasmus Hojlund, an incident Roy Keane said must have left him feeling “embarrassed” after the game.

Such a display left Jacobs-Bryant equally unimpressed, as she awarded the Englishman a 4/10 match rating at full-time and doubled down on the ’embarrasing’ nature of the Hojlund incident.

However, when we look at his statistics from the game, it can be argued that the 4/10 rating is still too generous.

For example, in his 96 minutes of action, the Sheffield-born defender amassed an expected assists figure of 0.03, made just one block, one tackle and one clearance, lost 50% of his ground duels, lost the ball a staggering 20 times, maintained a passing accuracy of just 76%, misplaced nine of 11 long passes and failed 50% of his dribbles.

Ultimately, while the entire City team were poor against United yesterday, Nunes, and particularly Walker, stood out as the worst of the worst, and while the Brazilian may have to keep his place in the team, Pep must drop the Englishman.