By the way, Niall McVeigh provides updates on the rest of the games from his chair.

News from elsewhere, relevant to City: Julian Alvarez – remember him? – has scored twice for Atletico at Sparta Prague. They replaced him with… Savinho?

Krishna contacts: “Hello John (or is it Scott under a new pseudonym?)

“Losing to Spurs. Then you lose to Arne’s successor. And ultimately lose to Arne himself. Certainly Pep wouldn’t like such orderly affairs, a narrow win today followed by a draw this weekend is what I predict.”

Yes, it’s Johannes. Standing up for the big man.

The headlines: De Bruyne still on the benchand that also applies to Gimenez. Walker fell, as did Savinho.

In: Nathan Aké, Matheus Nunes and Jack Grealish. Out: Walker, Savinho and John Stones, who are not in the selection at all.

The teams are in

As always, Jonathan Wilson has thought deeply about this unexpected malaise.

And yet there is something different. According to Opta, City have had the third-easiest run of games of any club since the start of this Premier League season, but if they lose at Anfield next week (and Liverpool are the side Guardiola has lost the most times to the second place) will be 11 points behind the leaders. The aura is gone; opponents sense blood in the water. This is like Chelsea in 2015/2016, or Manchester United under David Moyes, or Liverpool in the early 1990s. Parties are no longer confronted with them simply to avoid embarrassment; they believe there is a chance for a remarkable outcome.

The city is not old, okay? Not according to Pep, at least.

Missing for city: Oscar Bobb, Ruben Dias, Mateo Kovacic and of course Rodri.

The fact that everyone else looks tired is also a big problem.

For Feyenoord: Santiago Gimenez will be a big miss, and he is questionable with a thigh injury.

Brian Priske, the Feyenoord coach, the successor to Arne Slot at City: “For me they are still one of the best teams in the world, a world class team. We have seen a lot of their games and for example at the weekend against Spurs they were really unlucky. We know we have to play a perfect match to get a positive result, especially defensively.

More Pep: “In this situation we need to be more direct in our principles. Don’t change much, in fact less than ever. One day we will win a game and our minds will be clear. I hope it will be like that (against Feyenoord), if not on Sunday (against Liverpool). But there is a desire to change that and we are going to try.”

Does this mean they’re going *immediately*?

And Kevin DeBruyne: “It’s been a bit chaotic. I’ve seen so many people walking around in the medical field. See who’s playing, who’s not, people who shouldn’t be playing but did so with an injury; in these games we were everywhere. Everyone is down, but we have to move on.”

Some quotes from Pep from his press conference: “I still have the feeling that we will do very good things this season. I’m not giving up and I feel like we’ll get there. We congratulate the team that takes our crown because they deserve it, not because we gave it to them. (When) you defend a legacy, tradition, success, it’s so hard to deal with it.

Preamble