Manchester City 7 Leeds United 0: ‘Worst performance in my four years’ blasts Marcelo Bielsa

Manchester City were very, very good in their 7-0 victory but there was no disguising how bad Leeds were.

“This is the worst performance in my four years,” said Bielsa. “In no moment of the game were we able to balance the game. The sensation that we gave off that anything they attempted, we couldn’t prevent it.

“Anything that we attempted wasn’t going to prosper further than the middle of the pitch. In our half everything happened, in their half nothing happened.

“This is not a problem of individuals or the collective, nothing worked. We found no surprises in the game. The team that we faced was what we expected. The ideas and solutions that I proposed, none of it worked. I have to take responsibility in an absolute manner.”

If you want to know more, you should probably not read on until after the watershed.

The game was settled just after the half-hour, if not well before, when Kevin de Bruyne put his side 3-0 up. The visitors were still licking their wounds after being denied a penalty by video assistant referee Darren England and would later hit the post through Stuart Dallas but this was no hard-luck story.

Leeds’s defending was all over the place, their marking took social distancing to new extremes and their passing generally just returned the gaudy-coloured ball to the side who hogged it. But it must be hard to play quality football – any football – when your head is spinning.

Without a centre-forward by choice and a right-back by circumstances – Barnsley’s John Stones filling in for Kyle Walker and Joao Cancelo – the hosts were a constant whirr of activity.

In the space of little more than a minute de Bruyne stationed himself wide on the right, had a stint at centre-forward then dropped into the central midfield position he was supposed to be filling. Jamie Shackleton followed Jack Grealish as best he could when the England man wandered and before the first half was up, his calf had given up on him. Just what Leeds, whose left-back Junior Firpo will be suspended against Arsenal on Saturday for his booking, needed.

They named the same team as at Stamford Bridge with Shackleton at right-back in a 4-2-3-1 and Jack Harrison pushed onto the left wing. Shortly after the goal, Harrison was called over to the touchline and Dallas nudged forward into a 4-1-4-1 to try to rip up City’s passing patterns a bit earlier but it was mere window dressing. The gulf in class was alarming.

It was already one-way traffic when Phil Foden gave City the lead after eight minutes.

Illan Meslier had already made a low save from Grealish and Bernardo Silva had missed a good chance after City pulled Leeds apart. But when Rodri forced his way down the middle, the save just presented a chance Foden gobbled up for the 500th Premier League scored in Pep Guardiola’s 207 matches in charge.

“One-nil to the empty seats” sang the Leeds fans, not confined to the away end. It is a crying shame a team so beautiful cannot sell out its own stadium.

All night Leeds fan sang like their team were wearing light, not dark blue.

City just kept comimng too. Diego Llorente’s header half-cleared a corner and Riyad Mahrez picked up the ball, had a think about what he might like to do with it, looked up to see who was in the area, measured his cross, had another think, delivered it and watched Grealish head it in. There were only 13 minutes gone.

Leeds had a cruel glimmer of hope when the VAR took a close look at the ball hitting Oleksandr Zinchenko’s arm as Raphinha hounded him down on a rare excursion into City’s half.

England decided it was outside the area and within a matter of minutes de Bruyne ran onto an exquisite Rodri pass and scored.

The last hour was just for show, and for fans of bloodsport it was some show. Dallas had a shot tipped onto the post only after Mahrez scored a fourth, deflected off Firpo.

De Bruyne was so affronted by Foden’s goal being chalked off because he was fractionally offside when Raphinha sloppily gave the ball away he took it out on the ball, smashing it past Meslier a minute later. When Meslier saved a header from the unmarked Aymeric Laporte, then a follow-up by the unmarked Stones, only to be beaten by the still unmarked Stones, he must have wondered what the point was. Nathan Ake headed in a 78th-minute corner to equal Leeds’s record defeat but it was one record City were not about to break.

To top it all, Leeds have been charged by the Football Association for failing to ensure their players conducted themselves in an orderly fashion during Saturday’s defeat to Chelsea. They have until tomorrow to respond.

Manchester City: Ederson; Stones, Dias (Ake 65), Laporte, Zinchenko; De Bruyne, Rodri (Fernandinho 56), Silva (Gundogan 46); Foden, Mahrez, Grealish. Unused substitutes: Sterling, Jesus, Steffen, Egan-Riley, Palmer, Wilson-Esbrand.

Leeds United: Meslier; Shackleton (Klich 38), Ayling, Llorente, Firpo (Drameh 73); Dallas, Forshaw; Raphinha; Roberts, Harrison; James (Gelhardt 46). Unused substitutes: Klaesson, Cresswell, Summerville, Greenwood, McCarron, Jenkins.

Referee: P Tierney (Wigan).