Manchester City: Can Pep Guardiola’s side learn from their mistakes before it costs them trophies?

A moment of genius from Leroy Sane spurred City to a remarkable comeback against Schalke

Will Manchester City learn to stop switching off before it hurts them?

No, it has not hurt them much yet. They can win their first trophy of the season this Sunday in the Carabao Cup final, and it would be a surprise if they only stopped at one. They are inches behind Liverpool in the Premier League title race and are well set in the FA Cup and Champions League too. However their season ends up, with no trophies or four, no-one can say that it is currently going badly.

And yet, despite that, it feels as if City are maybe not playing at full capacity right now. That they have developed a bad habit, of losing their focus when they feel a game is already won. Especially an away game that they would be expected to win. As if as soon as they score they think about who they are playing next, rather than seeing out this win. It happened at Leicester in December, and at Newcastle in January, two 1-0 leads than became 2-1 defeats.

So far City have got away with it. Liverpool’s draws with West Ham and Leicester have allowed City back into the title race, although it felt after the Newcastle game as if City were finished. In the Champions League on Wednesday night it looked like a familiar story, another careless 2-1 defeat, only for Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling to turn the game in the final five minutes. City escaped again, and are now likely heading through to the quarter-finals.

But can City keep on saving themselves, or being saved by others? Probably not.

The luck will eventually run out. And if they continue to allow their standards to drop, even by a percentage here or there, it will cost them. And as February becomes March, and we get closer to the decisive moments in every competition, the stakes get higher. Any mistake now could cost City a trophy.

This is why City’s performance on Sunday against Chelsea is so intriguing. The Carabao Cup final is only two weeks after City beat Chelsea 6-0 at the Etihad Stadium. Given Chelsea have barely got any better since, City must be favourites for the game. But City have already lost to Chelsea once this year, and if their focus drops on Sunday they will not lift the League Cup.

Bernardo Silva knows this and he told his City team-mates that for the first hour of the first leg in Schalke, they put in “a performance that was not very good”, before they turned it around. And that they cannot allow any complacency in on Sunday. Because if they do then Chelsea will “destroy” them.

Leroy Sane turned City’s fortunes around with a stunning free-kick (AP)

“To be honest we should forget that match [the 6-0 win] because it won’t happen again,” Silva said.

”We are not expecting the same result. We are playing against one of the best sides in the world even though lately their results are not the best for them. Against those kind of players you can never relax. If you give them time to think time to play and time to decide they will destroy you. So yes we have to play with the same intensity and try to win another trophy.

That feels like the definitive test for City going into Sunday, whether they can find the same intensity that they show at their best. And while Guardiola resolutely defended City’s performance in his post-match press conference on Wedensday night, he had his own warning too for the City players. That they cannot keep allowing weakness in, because eventually it will be punished. Guardiola just hopes that the risks City ran at Schalke will be enough to stop them from making the same mistake at Wembley.

“When the opponent do brilliant actions, do big performance, you have to accept it,” he said. “Show me how good you are, opponent, show me. So maybe in the future, for the final on Sunday against Chelsea, and for our future, maybe it is going to help us. You have to live this kind of situation, this competition, to realise and to improve.”