If Manchester City get beaten in a Champions League dead rubber and nobody is there to see it, did it really happen? Certainly that will be the only crumb of comfort for Pep Guardiola as he debriefs this silent shambles, in which his half-interested side were serially cut open, Kyle Walker managed to get himself suspended for the last-16 and the only flicker of experimentation was a pointless three minutes given to Cole Palmer at the end.
Normally City are peerless when the stakes are at their lowest. How do you think they won all those League Cups? But here they seemed to get sucked into a perfect vortex of disinterest: some combination of the situation and the empty stadium and the bitter cold and the fact that Leipzig still needed a result to seal third place and qualify for the Europa League. Few City players distinguished themselves here. Zack Steffen was good in goal.
