Second-half blues hampering City

Maybe you’ve heard someone who doesn’t watch basketball opine that only the last few minutes of hoops are worth watching. (For the record, I am not this person. Basketball, especially when my team is playing, makes me more nervous than any other sport.)

Now, let’s take that idiom, adjust it to soccer and apply it to a phenomenon that’s backed up by evidence. Like this: Manchester City matches only begin after halftime.

Take their February 1 draw at Tottenham Hotspur for example.

Leading 2-0 at the break thanks to goals from Rayan Cherki and Antoine Semenyo, and having dominated every statistical category through 45 minutes, City looked an entirely different team in the second half. And not in a good way.

It conceded an extra nine per cent possession, lacked any semblance of tenacity, failed to place a single shot on target and conceded twice — both times to Dominic Solanke, who scored his first two goals of the season.

With first-place Arsenal having beaten Leeds the previous afternoon, second-spot City’s 2-2 result only cut the gap atop the table from seven points to six. It was a draw that felt like a loss, and a crushing one.

It was also just the latest second-half collapse by a Manchester City team that, until relatively recently, had taken pride in out-pressing, out-working and generally out-footballing their opponents from the opening whistle to the final one.

Two weeks before its North London nightmare, it had lost the Manchester Derby through a pair of goals after the restart. In its match before that, it allowed Brighton to battle to a draw. And in the one before that, an Enzo Fernández equalizer deep into stoppage time saw Chelsea cleave two points off its title challenge. You get the gist.

Only West Ham, in the relegation places, has thrown away more points from half-time leads than City this season. If Premier League matches were 45 minutes long — the second 45 minutes — City would be eighth.

In his post-match remarks on Sunday, manager Pep Guardiola, feeling especially prickly, complained that Solanke had fouled City defender Marc Guéhi in the build-up to the first Spurs goal. It was a moment, he lamented, that had affected his players emotionally.

Guardiola, you see, operates under the assumption that his team is conspired against by linespeople, referees, league officials, journalists and everyone else who doesn’t use Blue Moon as their ringtone, though even some of those are doubtless double agents.

That said, he was unusually reflective just a few days later when he admitted that second halves were a problem, that his squad was younger than in years past, and that maybe his players needed the lessons of failure in order to improve.

“Maybe we stop trying to do what we’ve done in first halves,” he said. “We have to grow.”

They’d better grow fast, because on Sunday they face the prospect of a resurgent Liverpool at Anfield (10:30 a.m., FuboTV).

The reigning Premier League champion, Liverpool blew its title defence during a two-month slump in which it lost six of seven matches between late September and the end of November.

There are any number of reasons why it still sits a disappointing sixth in the standings — an aging Mohamed Salah, the departure of Luis Diaz and a curious transfer strategy among them. But the tragic pre-season death of forward Diogo Jota rocked the entire club — quite understandably — and in that context our critique of Liverpool’s form will end here.

In any event, the Reds have been a much different proposition of late than even a month ago.

Their last two Champions League games have produced a 3-0 thumping of Marseille at Stade Velodrome and a 6-0 hammering of Qarabag. Don’t tell City, but six of those nine goals came in the second half.

Liverpool is also coming off a 4-1 win over Newcastle. And it scored three of those goals after the interval.

But perhaps most crucially has been the revitalized performances of summer signing Florian Wirtz, whose British-record transfer fee of nearly 140 million euros brought with it an expectation he’s only now beginning to realize.

The 22-year-old has scored six times in his last 11 outings in all competitions and assisted three others. That Liverpool has lost just once in that span is no coincidence.

Reds manager Arne Slot, who might have been sacked if results hadn’t improved, has credited Wirtz with working hard in training and in the gym. His job, he explained this week, was simply to keep playing the Germany international.

“That’s the only way players can improve,” he said. “Maybe now he has a better connection with his teammates because [they] played more and more together.”

Last term, en route to the title, Liverpool beat City 2-0 home and away. This season, during that extended streak of losses, it lost 3-0 to Guardiola’s side.

Incidentally, City built a 2-0 first-half lead in that early November encounter and never looked back. It desperately needs a reprise on Sunday if it stands any chance of catching Arsenal.

Thankfully for Manchester City, idioms are only that. And the first half is just as meaningful as the second.

winnipegfreepress.com/jerradpeters