Manchester City may have created their own nightmare with James Trafford

Manchester City is a bit of a mess right now. Goals aren't coming as easily as they once did, and the defensive breakdowns are real. The club is leaving so much open space that even a top-end goalkeeper would struggle to stop balls from hitting the back of the net.

Blues fans definitely have a right to ask if fewer goals would have been scored had the club not made a quick decision early last season to bench James Trafford in place of the recently acquired Gianluigi Donnarumma. The Italian had all the accolades after playing for Paris Saint-Germain, but was he truly better than Trafford?

He hasn't been this season, for sure. While Trafford left to join Leeds, mainly because he started three matches for Man City last season, after Donnarumma was added, the English keeper saw action in just one more match. Donnarumma has remained the top keeper in Manchester and is having arguably his worst season.

Trafford has allowed eight goals in 10 matches and has a save percentage of 82.2. Donnarumma has allowed 13 goals in 10 matches, but his save percentage is a career-worst 65.8. His 1.3 goals per 90 minutes dwarfs his previous worst of 1.18 with Milan a decade ago.

Sure, not all those goals are on Donnarumma, but many of them are. His ball control near the goal has been awful at times. He is capable of making a spectacular save and then following that up by allowing a ball to roll in from an extreme angle. He hasn't been good enough, even behind a defense that has been putrid.

Would Trafford have been the wiser choice to keep in goal last season, had City not gotten greedy and brought in Donnarumma, and Trafford stayed the keeper this season? Would Man City not have lost three straight Premier League matches with Trafford scooping up some of the balls that Donnarumma has missed? Probably.

The most depressing part is that it's too late to have any regrets now. Manchester City made its choice and has to live with the decision. Moving forward, the club should know to not expect world-class goalkeeping by the Italian, but does need to give him a lot more help.

This leads to the question of whether Enzo Maresca is the man to help Gianluigi Donnarumma play better. While City has had elite wingers and strikers for more than a decade, and letting those players loose at times makes sense, Maresca has to clean up the defense.

He wanted to bring in players like Enzo Fernandez, but Maresca's unwillingness to stay anywhere close to the same XI has caused communication problems on the pitch. Donnarumma can't be sure how to play because he can't be sure what will unfold in front of him.

Still, one can likely assume that James Trafford, who is playing quite well for Leeds, would have made a couple of the saves that Donnarumma didn't. Would that have been enough to win one of the last three Premier League matches? Likely.