A broken dam. Brentford’s will and guile forced that but so too did an edginess in Manchester City’s back line.
A stretched, dazed back line that will be strengthened with two new faces in the coming days. That, in this mid-season transition that Pep Guardiola has sanctioned in a busy January window, cannot come soon enough for the champions.
And that is not to say a couple of young centre halves - Abdukodir Khusanov of Lens, teenager Vitor Reis from Palmeiras – will fix City’s ills. It’d be unfair to expect them to.