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Manchester City’s 4-2 defeat to Leicester City at the weekend brought a head to a poor run the side have been enduring. Starting the season brilliantly, huge praise went the way of manager Pep Guardiola for adapting to the Premier League so quickly, but things have very much changed.

With a defence which seems weaker than the sum of it parts, Guardiola is struggling to deal with the realities of Premier League football. Insistent that he won’t adapt his style, and has no intention of working on, or encouraging, tackling, Manchester City fans would hope something different is happening in private.

Over in Spain they took pride in how Guardiola hit the ground running and, whilst the Catalan press may still be trying to largely ignore City’s poor spell, Marca aren’t.

Screen Shot 2016-12-12 at 07.50.09In their Sunday edition the Spanish newspaper stated that ‘crisis in undeniable’ at Manchester City, and there’s a ‘depression’ around the place. Rather than going forwards, the club are going backwards.

After the match against Leicester City, Claudio Bravo, Bacary Sagna, John Stones, Pablo Zabaleta, Fernando, Ilkay Gundogan and Kelechi Iheanacho all got a zero mark.

Despite 7 of his team getting no mark, Marca somehow deemed it appropriate to given Guardiola a star, which probably underlines a hesitancy to criticise the manager.