Panting as he sprinted back towards the Manchester City goal, Ilkay Gundogan gestured towards James Maddison.
Unable to keep up with the Tottenham Hotspur midfielder, Gundogan could only watch with anguish as Maddison made it beyond John Stones to guide the ball with his left foot into the bottom corner.
At that stage of the game, Spurs' clinical break felt something of a fluke. It had begun with Radu-Matei Drăgușin's hopeful long ball, which was crafted into a chance by the guile of the exceptional Dejan Kulusevski, who played the inch-perfect pass for Maddison to convert.
However, once the City net rippled, it was as if the Tottenham Hotspur team collectively realized that bypassing their opponent's midfielder was far easier than their minds had let them believe.
White shirts flooded forward in attack after attack, and Gundogan looked every one of his 34 years. Pape Matar Sarr and Yves Bissouma repeatedly outmuscled or outpaced him in what became a humiliating 0-4 collapse.
It's unfair to single out the legendary German international as being to blame for Manchester City's current woes. But his floundering presence in the centre of the Etihad pitch is emblematic of the club's struggles.
Gundogan was Pep Guardiola's first signing when he arrived in North West England eight years ago. He is also his most recent addition, having re-signed for the club this summer.
In his defense, when he returned, there was little suggestion he'd be relied upon as Manchester City's first-choice defensive midfielder for most of the season. He reinforced a midfield engine that has had sparse investment in the past five seasons.
The season-ending ACL injury to Rodri has left a gaping hole, which meant that on Saturday evening, Guardiola had to bank on the teenage Rico Lewis, Bernardo Silva, and Gundogan to resist the energetic Spurs midfield.
If City's issues were confined to the area where they were missing Rodri, that would feel manageable.
But as the game reached its conclusion, there was another moment that drove home an equally concerning issue.
Bernardo Silva lost the ball by halfway, and it was played to Timo Werner, who faced down Kyle Walker.
As he had done so many times before with players like Kylian Mbappe and Vinicius Junior, the English right-back offered his opponent the opportunity to race.
Usually, the result is that Walker turns on the afterburners and wins the duel.
But against Spurs, Werner showed the Manchester City captain a clean set of heels as Walker pumped his arms and puffed his cheeks.
And like that, the magic trick for foiling counterattacks Guardiola's team has relied on for years is gone.
The question is, how on earth does the Catalan coach address these cracks in the foundations of his team?
A Man With Solutions
There was no getting around the fact that Tottenham Hotspurs win was historic.
The margin of victory, 0-4, which came after four successive defeats, set new records for both Guardiola and Manchester City.
But when he faced down the media, the Catalan coach remained philosophical when faced with the milestones.
"When you lose 4-0 there is not much to say," Guardiola said post game," in eight years we never lived this. I knew sooner or later we would drop.
"I never expected to lose three Premier League games in a row but we have been incredibly consistent again and again and again. Now, we cannot deny the reality that sometimes happens in football and life is here."
Any observer of Guardiola knows that the coach is likely to become more dogmatic in the face of such adversity.
All his successes have been delivered when he's found a new way to control the game, whether with a false nine or a centre-half playing in midfield.
In his postmortem, it was the lack of control he chose to focus on.
"We are a bit fragile right now, that is obvious," he added "We struggled to score goals and after when they arrived they scored.
"We are playing with a little bit of negativity in our thoughts but this is normal. Football is a sense
of mood.
"We were always a consistent team conceding few chances. Our game was about control.
"This is not a team created to do box-to-box 40 times in a game - we are not good at that. We were always a team who conceded few, but now we concede more. I would like there to just be one reason but there are many."
You wouldn't bet against Guardiola finding a solution to this issue; he has demonstrated that he can craft answers to seemingly impossible questions.
But the stark reality is that his tools on some parts of the pitch have never been more limited.