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Following the recent international break, the three games against Nancy, Marseille and Red Bull Salzburg were talked about as being crucial for Paris Saint-Germain. In particular for their manager Antoine Kombouaré in the wake of rumours linking Carlo Ancelotti with a move to the capital. Just under two weeks later and the club have suffered three damaging defeats bringing what was a rapidly progressing season to a shuddering halt. And despite still sitting second in the league, PSG are staring Europa League elimination in the face and facing a crisis of sorts. Now in the wake of the continental debacle, rumours surfaced on Saturday morning suggesting Kombouaré was ‘hours from being sacked’ and replaced temporarily by former player Claude Makélelé.

Speaking after the match PSG sporting director Leonardo said: “This is a difficult defeat but not one that changes how we are thinking about the team or the league. We were first and that is important. It was a tough, physical game. Marseille scored and that is always positive in a ‘Clasico’.”

Whilst the Nancy defeat could be chalked up to a bad day at the office, the heavy 3-0 defeat to Marseille and the embarrassing and unexpected 2-0 loss to Salzburg have set alarm bells ringing at the Parc des Princes. It was suggested that the intense speculation surrounding Kombouaré’s position following the Ancelotti rumours would undermine the team’s performances and it has done exactly that. Star players such as Javier Pastore, Jérémy Ménez, Diego Lugano and Kévin Gameiro have disappeared from recent matches and have come in for some intense criticism lately, whilst the team’s lack of leadership under young Mamadou Sakho has been exposed on numerous occasions.

To look at PSG’s problems in a nutshell, witness Sunday’s Clasico defeat to bitter rivals l’OM. PSG got everything wrong on the night. Firstly in the selection, Gameiro was up front on his own again which has been proven time and again this season does not work when he is faced with two, big, strong centre backs of greater physical presence. Although Guillaume Hoarau might not be available, the selection of Mevlüt Erdinç to start alongside the French international would have given Kombouaré more variety despite the two players being very similar in style and physique. The 4-5-1 formation that served the manager so well at the start of the season has now been found out by their opposition and it has made the current team far too predictable.

A disappointed Kombouaré addressed the press after the game and said: “I was disappointed when they opened the scoring. I thought it was against the run of play but the second half left me sour. We had plenty of time to get back into the game but lost all the 50-50s and when you lose out physically it becomes very hard. OM had the anger and the capacity to win those duels.”

It is no secret that les Rouges-et-Bleus sporting director Leonardo has identified the full-back positions as two key weaknesses in PSG’s armour and again in the match against Marseille, PSG were exposed down the sides time and again and found it difficult to get a foot hold in the game because of their inability to retrieve the ball once it goes out wide. Christophe Jallet, Sylvain Armand, Marcos Ceará and Siaka Tiéné, whoever Kombouaré plays out of the four there is not good enough defensively. Jallet is too attack-minded, Armand is too slow, Ceará’s positioning is questionable and Tiéné is also too aggressive going forward. The OM match was lost on the wings as the crucial first goal was a cross that was headed in from a situation where the full-backs should not have allowed that space and the centre-backs should have won the ball in the air and cleared.

Nobody had a more torrid time that night than Uruguay captain and PSG colossus Diego Lugano and his protégée Mamadou Sakho. Lugano in particular looked ragged and out of his depth, the supposedly world-class leader was dangerously quiet and reduced to a performance more suited to a brawler than a defender. It has not been the best of starts to his PSG career and this dreadful performance will not help him win over the club’s fans who are already skeptical over his presence in the backline. Accepted it takes time to bed in to a new side and learn your teammates styles of play but he has been there for over three months and with his experience he is a player the younger ones should be looking up to. On Sunday night they saw him panicking, unsure of where to position himself and losing his cool which will not have filled them with confidence.

The same goes for Armand in fact, who despite being a great long-term servant for the club has looked painfully out of place alongside his younger teammates recently. ‘Mr PSG’ looked more like a geriatric than a gentleman on Sunday night and it is difficult to see where he really fits into this PSG side anymore.  Too slow to play left-back and too cumbersome to be a first choice centre-back, the future does not look promising for him after January.

The summer’s transfer window saw the club bring in a host of new, big-name signings who for the most part, have lived up to their expectations so far. However, Pastore, Ménez and Gameiro all failed to justify their hype with turgid performances on Sunday night. Pastore was anonymous and was stranded close to the halfway line in a deeper role than normal which does not suit his game, Gameiro was unable to impose himself because of the aforementioned mismatch with larger defenders and Ménez was lazy and ineffective at times, only showing fleeting bursts of his real skill and electric pace.

These are serious performance problems for Kombouaré to analyse with Pastore coming too deep, Gameiro even more isolated, Ménez sauntering around, complaining and offering very little and Gameiro then even finding himself at right-back at one point thanks to the manager’s incomprehensible gameplan.

That said, nothing should be taken away from the fact that Marseille produced an unexpected performance of the highest quality that took many people by surprise. The desire shown by the players was a breath of fresh air to those who thought that Didier Deschamps’ time at the Stade Vélodrome is drawing to a close and the commitment of all the players on the pitch may have helped resuscitate their season.

Kombouaré also paid credit to the opposition saying: “We are really down but ‘Bravo’ to Marseille who played the match they had to.”

Looking at the bigger picture for PSG now, it is clear that the Kombouaré situation has reached critical level. The antics at boardroom level and Leonardo’s flagrant flirtation with Carlo Ancelotti and the speculation that follows it has affected the players’ performances and now PSG are reaping the “rewards” of constantly flashing their money around. The recent revelations have disturbed what was a nice balance and team chemistry at the start of the season and put not only the manager’s job in peril but the club’s chances of title success this season on the line.

If Kombouaré was being judged SOLELY on that match as was suggested in the build-up to the game and I emphasis solely, he should be sacked for a performance like that against your arch-rivals. It is a nonsense that his position is under speculation in the first place given what he has achieved at the club but given how the game was hyped up and his future was scrutinised, he should have gone if PSG wanted to take their chance to prepare for next season which to any rational thinking person is ludicrous at this stage with so much at stake.

So why is his position coming under threat and is it justified? Well in part yes, Kombouaré has no alternative gameplans when it comes to how the team approach their games. Those familiar with Kombouaré’s Valenciennes side and previous PSG sides know him to be a 4-4-2 man and that begs the question why is he not trying this at the moment? 4-5-1 is not working, he has other strikers on the bench such as Erdinç, even if they are not an ideal foil for Gameiro, and he has got to try it because teams know exactly how PSG will line up to face them and they bank on the fact that Kombouaré will prefer to make like-for-like substitutions rather than change his system from the 4-5-1 which has been implemented to accommodate the club’s embarrassment of attacking riches they have available to them. Echoing Simon Kuper’s thoughts from last week’s podcast on managers and their true roles at big clubs, it poses the question of how much of a say does he really have if an out-of-sorts Pastore and a recently misfiring Gameiro never find themselves demoted to the bench?

The defence also needs a lot of work and perhaps a bold change to combat the defensive presence on each flank. Does Kombouaré go 3-5-2 and make the most of the central defensive talent in Lugano, Sakho and Milan Biševac, also offsetting the weaknesses at full-back and implore Ménez and Nenê to work harder defending and base the team’s strength in midfield and up front? It is painfully obvious that the side need Hoarau back if for nothing more than a bit of variety up front, but further on from that the side needs experience there too.  There is not as much depth in this side as first thought as we have seen thanks the recent spate of injuries and PSG need to invest in more options both on wing and up front where their approach to games has become stymied and repetitive.

Finally, experience is desperately needed. Against Marseille the team crumbled and lost their heads at vital moments after the first goal. There was no leader to provide the spark and the influence to inspire a comeback following Jean Calvé’s goal for Nancy at the Parc des Princes and there was nobody to grab the game by the scruff of the neck in Austria on Thursday and set an example to the younger members of this PSG side.

A David Beckham or a Samuel Eto’o who have been linked to the club in the media recently would not let these sorts of things happen. They are winners who have experienced everything at the pinnacle of European football and despite the fact that neither may be the most vocal of characters; they would lead by example in these situations and inspire the younger members of the team. Whether or not Beckham would see much of the pitch if he joined, his experience would have been invaluable on Sunday night. The team is talented no doubt, but it will get nowhere and win nothing without experience. You don’t win anything with kids. In this case it is true.

Speaking after the devastating 2-0 away defeat to Salzburg on Thursday Kombouaré said: “It’s a bitter defeat and I was expecting a very different match from my players. Certainly there is a lack of confidence and we’re going to need some kind of turning point, but the only way we’ll get things to click again is to try harder and give even more. It’s times like these that you see which players have real backbone and are ready to fight.”

You don’t need a team packed full of players that need armbands to show that they are leaders. Whether that comes from the natural leadership that a player like Makélelé or possibly a Beckham brings or not remains to be seen, but the team are in desperate need of some on-pitch managers. The club need one or two players that can lead without necessarily being captain, players who have that ability to communicate with their teammates and get the best out of them without feeling like they are being reprimanded and who can boost their confidence on the pitch and take them aside and provide a calming influence off it. You do not need armbands to be a leader but you do need armbands to swim and at the moment, this PSG side is sinking.