Pep Guardiola's Manchester City are mortal after all. Mauricio Pochettino's Tottenham played a perfect game to outclass their previously-perfect opponents in a searing Premier League show at White Hart Lane on Sunday.
Coming into the match with a perfect six wins from six matches, City were brought crashing down to earth by a pressing Spurs team that never relented, never gave the high-flying team a moment's peace.
The result of that outstanding performance from Tottenham was a comprehensive and completely deserved 2-0 victory. Spurs opened the scoring thanks to an Aleksandar Kolarov own goal in the ninth minute, before Dele Alli, off a beautiful pass from Son Heung-min, finished expertly to ensure Spurs would end City's dream start to the season.
"It was very clear, to be the protagonist, to play, to press high – and our performance was fantastic," Pochettino, whose managerial stock just keeps going up and up, said. "The performance was perfect. I think it's an unbelievable victory that we enjoyed a lot.
"The effort from the team was unbelievable and it was an incredible atmosphere at White Hart Lane again, the fans were fantastic. It was a very exciting game, I enjoyed it a lot."
One person who would not have enjoyed it at all would have been Guardiola, who sat on the bench and saw his usually-silky passing team lose the ball time and again, as Spurs pressed them into submission. One of the players of the season so far – Fernandinho – had a nightmare, giving the ball away several times, while also conceding a penalty, while City's weakness in the full-back position was ruthlessly exposed by Tottenham.
Guardiola now has a job at hand to fix those obvious problems, because most teams will look at this performance from Spurs, and to a lesser extent Celtic in the Champions League last week, and look to employ similar tactics.
"I'm here to do a job and to get better," Guardiola said. "We need to process and analyse what we are doing well and not well. It's the end of September so you cannot imagine that our team is already done. They have done an amazing performance until now. Still, we are not perfect but the team are fighting until the end and that is the most important thing.
"We had a lot of problems trying to create and we missed a lot of balls in positions where they are so, so dangerous. We didn't have many chances to do a high press because they always played directly to Son.
"We knew that they would press high and we know we want to do it, it's just they did it better."
What the result has also done is bring the teams at the top of the table closer together. City remain the leaders with 18 points from seven matches, but Spurs now have 17, with Arsenal and Liverpool on 16. Manchester United and Chelsea are on 13 points, one behind fifth-placed Everton.
