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Manchester City goalkeeper James Trafford had a game to forget against Tottenham, but he isn't exactly being helped to settle
James Trafford looked like he wanted to swallow the ground up by the time Manchester City's defeat to Tottenham was over. A 2-0 home loss sucked most of the momentum out of their 4-0 win at Wolves last week, and Trafford had been personally responsible.
The pass inside his box to Nico Gonzalez was never on, and made people remember just how good Ederson is with his feet in pressure situations - even if he had done similar at the Club World Cup. More worrying for Pep Guardiola was the way Trafford completely lost confidence after that, creating uncertainty in the second half as the team should have been driving for a way back into the game.
Nobody should be written off after one game though, especially when it comes after an impressive showing the week before and even more so when it comes amid so much uncertainty. If Trafford thought he knew what he was getting into when he joined City at the start of the month, the last few weeks have been chaotic.
Guardiola insisted that Ederson remained his No.1 ahead of the first Premier League game last week, yet minutes later Trafford knew he was starting with the Brazilian coming down with an untimely bout of sickness. After another week where both had trained, the manager couldn't confirm who his No.1 was and ended up deciding the night before the game that Trafford would keep his place.
With Ederson watching on from the bench, that is more pressure for Trafford than it had been the week before. The 22-year-old also has to cope with the uneasy lingering feeling that Ederson will leave for Galatasaray before the window is out, and Champions League-winning prime-of-his-life Gianluigi Donnarumma will arrive from Paris Saint-Germain to be the new No.1 and present Trafford with a much more difficult challenge.
It has been said about Stefan Ortega that there are a shortage of options for him because most clubs with any sense have already sorted their No.1 going into the season, but City cannot include themselves in that bracket. That isn't a good place to be in, and it isn't fair on Trafford.
City's signings have thrived under Guardiola more often than not because of their quality, but also because they have been incorporated into a finely-tuned machine. They have been helped with their integration by knowing exactly what is expected of them and being helped along with that by others who know what they are doing.
Tottenham has to go down as a missed opportunity for Trafford to make more of a claim for the No.1 shirt, but he has walked into a goalkeeping department that is the most unclear it has been since Guardiola was bombing Joe Hart out of the squad in his first summer in charge and trying to sign anybody who played for Barcelona.
Trafford has to recover his focus after Saturday, but so do City in the next week if they are to cut out the wobbles going forward.
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