Manchester City have a problem. That may be an overly negative view to take after a 4-2 come-from-behind win which saw Erling Haaland score his first hat-trick for City in only his four league game. But the fact that City had to fight back - even if impressively so - from two goals down against Crystal Palace should not be ignored.
Saturday's win gave City an unwanted statistic to mull over; the Blues have now fallen two goals behind in four of their last six Premier League games.
Of course, it's often not how you start, but how you finish that determines the outcome of a match. In those four games City ended up drawing 2-2 with West Ham, beating Aston Villa 3-2 on the remarkable final day of last season, drawing 3-3 with Newcastle last weekend and defeating Palace 4-2 on Saturday.
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City clearly have remarkable powers of recovery, something that Pep Guardiola will rightly identify as a positive and a quality that will serve them well. His tactical tweaks - relieving Kyle Walker of his central playmaking duties, pushing Bernardo Silva out to the right wing and shifting City's shape to something of a 3-2-2-3 - plus the performances of Haaland and Bernardo in particular combined to produce an excellent second-half showing.
But the reality is this: it is simply not sustainable, nor conducive to success, to keep handing opponents two-goal leads.
While City's new habit hasn't hurt them too badly, it has now earned them an unwanted reputation. Get in City's faces - particularly early on in games - disrupt their rhythm and have a solid defensive plan and you've got a decent chance of taking points off them, no matter how hard they throw the kitchen sink at you later in the game.
Against Newcastle last weekend, City's defence was given the benefit of the doubt as they struggled to cope with the relentless running of Allan Saint-Maximin, Callum Wilson and Miguel Almiron in front of a raucous St James' Park crowd.
It's certainly not every week that you come up against wingers as dangerous as Saint-Maximin, but that excuse wasn't available to City against Palace. The visitors were predictably solid in defence and quick on the counter in the first half, but it was defensive sloppiness that put City at a near-immediate disadvantage.
City fell behind after less than four minutes when a free-kick into the box deflected off John Stones and into the back of the net. If there was an element of fluke about that one, there wasn't about the second. Stones lost track of imposing centre-back Joachim Andersen and the Dane connected from a corner to double the visitors' lead.
The goals weren't all on Stones - as was the case for 70 minutes against Newcastle, he and Dias seemed to lack the understanding that made them such a good partnership in 2020/21. Given Stones' lack of starts last season, perhaps that is to be expected.
In the first-half City didn't do the basic things right in defence. As Fabian Delph famously said in the All or Nothing documentary of City's 2017/18 title-winning season, the basics of football are the minimum requirement for success.
"We have to improve," Guardiola said of his side's defensive frailties post-match. "We're soft in some departments, parts we need to be in competition more. The Premier League doesn't wait. When you're waiting it is difficult."
Without wishing to disrespect the likes of West Ham, Villa, Newcastle and Palace, they aren't top-level Champions League sides. If City don't shake their self-destructive habit soon, then they'll struggle against teams that don't allow them to pull off dramatic comebacks.
Maybe the return of injury of Nathan Ake - City did not concede during the 201 minutes he's played in the league this season - will help. Whatever the issue and whatever the solution, Guardiola must fix City's defence soon or risk over-relying on his team's comeback ability.
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