Gianluigi Donnarumma’s lack of discipline is a problem being ignored by Pep Guardiola | OneFootball

They are the Premier League’s dirty half-dozen. Or its persistent offenders, anyway. As December began, six players had incurred suspensions for accumulating five cautions in different games. They are Cristian Romero, Marcos Senesi, Sasa Lukic, David Brooks, Lucas Paqueta and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall.

The first trio seem more understandable – two centre-backs and a defensive midfielder – than the three flair players, though two of Dewsbury-Hall’s cautions were harsh at the least and, Everton would argue, just plain wrong. Yet they could soon have company, and a player with still less reason to incur the wrath of officials quite so often.

Gianluigi Donnarumma is on the brink of a rare and ridiculous feat: a goalkeeper getting banned for forever getting booked. In his case, it is all the more impressive – or unimpressive, according to interpretation – because he was not even a Manchester City player in August. In 14 appearances for his new club, he has five bookings: four in the Premier League and one in Europe. And all but one of those cautions was for dissent. The other, in City’s 1-1 draw away at Arsenal was for perceived timewasting. In short, none have come for anything as necessary as, say, fouling an opponent.

And if there are more extreme and egregious cases of a player talking themselves into a ban, as Paqueta demonstrated with his self-destructive stupidity in West Ham’s defeat to Liverpool on Sunday, the probability that Donnarumma will soon have to sit a game out is looming larger.

A goalkeeper who can make extraordinary saves is suddenly attracting attention for other reasons. Leeds manager Daniel Farke accused him of going to ground to, in effect, create a timeout during the second half of City’s victory on Saturday. Farke feels goalkeepers are feigning injuries to bring about stoppages in play; the inference from him was that Donnarumma was never actually hurt when he received treatment.

But a goalkeeper who has had too much to say to officials appears not to be in communication with his own manager over the subject of his disciplinary record. Guardiola has been asked twice in a week if he would talk to Donnarumma as a ban beckoned. On each occasion, he said he would not.

Last week, his curt reply was that if the Italy No 1 was suspended: “James [Trafford] will play.” On Monday, a grumpy Guardiola addressed the subject of Donnarumma’s collection of cautions by saying: “He has many, it is what it is.”

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Gianluigi Donnarumma has repeatedly been booked for dissent since joining Man City (AFP via Getty Images)

For a manager with a famous attention to detail, it suggested a strange passiveness, assuming he had replied honestly. Guardiola may not be so relaxed about it, given that City have lost the last three Premier and Champions League matches Trafford has started.

He may not have been preparing for such a scenario, either. After all, Donnarumma did not arrive with quite such a reputation. He was booked three times in his final season with Paris Saint-Germain. He saw yellow six times in 2023-24 – a career-high, or low, depending on how it is viewed – but one was for Italy and that came over a 51-game campaign. He has gone from a booking every 8.5 matches then to one every 2.8 now.

It may be significant that, against Bournemouth and Newcastle, he was cautioned for his complaints about set-piece goals which he thought should have been disallowed: the former, though, was his first major mistake in a City shirt. Nevertheless, it may indicate an unhappy adjustment to the different officiating in England, to a sense that referees permit more contact with goalkeepers at free kicks and corners.

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Donnarumma risks being suspended having received four cautions in the Premier League (Getty Images)

Equally, in the Champions League draw at Monaco, he arguably risked a second yellow card by starting a melee by refusing to give the ball to the hosts when they were awarded an injury-time penalty (for Nico Gonzalez kicking an opponent in the head, so the fault scarcely lay with the men in black).

There can be the broader impression that Donnarumma involves himself in such situations too often. City may have needed more of a big personality in goal and, in other respects, he has provided the presence they required.

Every now and then, though, a vow of silence could be beneficial. Go back three months to when Donnarumma joined and the supposed problems were with his feet, not his mouth, His passing has not been the shortcoming some anticipated. His talking has been the issue few expected. And now he is on the brink of one of the season’s stranger suspensions, and one of the more needless.