Fewest Total Defeats in a season for City

[Vienna_70]

Preston are the only team to have a true Invincibles season in 1888-89.

They didnt lose a single game: they didn’t lose in the league, and won the FA Cup without conceding a goal.

Granted, it was only 22 league games in the inaugural Football League season (18 wins, 4 draws, 0 defeats), and 5 FA Cup games. But they still achieved it and nobody else in that era did (or ever have since).

But that was long before football was invented in 1992.

It can’t be true.

 

[Vienna_70]

Put it this way: We won the Community Shield on penalties after drawing the final.

The penalty shootout could conceivably take place the next day or a week later because it's entirely separate to the game itself, the 90/120 minutes. The only condition is that players removed from the game either through injury or substitution cannot take a penalty. Over the years people have assumed that penalties are part of the actual game because shootouts take place immediately after the game has finished, but that's not the case.

It's why Rodri's undefeated record went on after we were knocked out by Real Madrid in the Champions League last season. We drew the game and lost the penalty shootout. The penalty shootout was necessary because the game couldn't find a winner - it was drawn. As I said, penalty shootouts could take place a day, a week, or a month after the game in question but it's just easier to do it straight away because fans are already in the ground.

My initial thought after the game was that we’d closed the gap on the number of derby wins to 11, but then I, almost immediately, realised it remains at 12.

 

[Lord Blue]

Seem to remember we barely lost a game in the 1942-43 season

Flip, how old are you ?!

 

[Vic]

Put it this way: We won the Community Shield on penalties after drawing the final.

The penalty shootout could conceivably take place the next day or a week later because it's entirely separate to the game itself, the 90/120 minutes. The only condition is that players removed from the game either through injury or substitution cannot take a penalty. Over the years people have assumed that penalties are part of the actual game because shootouts take place immediately after the game has finished, but that's not the case.

It's why Rodri's undefeated record went on after we were knocked out by Real Madrid in the Champions League last season. We drew the game and lost the penalty shootout. The penalty shootout was necessary because the game couldn't find a winner - it was drawn. As I said, penalty shootouts could take place a day, a week, or a month after the game in question but it's just easier to do it straight away because fans are already in the ground.

The penalty shoot-out is a means of determining a winner when the scores are level at full time. I doubt that any competition has a rule that allows or expects the shoot-out NOT to happen there and then (either at full time or after extra time). For the Community Shield the rule is that if at the conclusion of the match the teams are level then penalty kicks are taken to determine the winner.

The laws of the game say the duration of a match is two equal halves of 45 minutes (law 7). To my surprise, you have to go to law 10 (determining the outcome of a match) for the following:

Winning team
The team scoring the greater number of goals is the winner. If both teams score
no goals or an equal number of goals, the match is drawn.
When competition rules require a winning team after a drawn match or
home-and-away tie, the only permitted procedures to determine the winning
team are:
• away goals rule
• two equal periods of extra time not exceeding 15 minutes each
• penalties (penalty shoot-out)
A combination of the above procedures may be used.

On that basis, the official result of the match should be the full-time result at 90 minutes. Extra time and/or penalties are just ways of determing a winner of a drawn game. So I guess it must just be a convention that statistics (goals scored, winning / losing runs) include what happens in extra time but not penalty shoot-outs.

The laws used to say that only scoring a goal could determine a match, but that was long after extra time was commonly used to settle a game. I'll have to consult historians of the laws for how and when extra time could be played. The story of Darwen v Old Etonians in the 1879 FA Cup Final says a lot about how football became a working class sport (and why did the final have to be in London?)

Once the excitement at being drawn to play the Old Etonians had worn off, the club had to deal with the practicalities. How was it going to afford to get to London and would their players be willing to lose money by taking time off work on Saturday morning? Some were already on short time or had been laid off due to an economic slump. A Saturday afternoon kick-off was as necessary for the players as it was for their co-workers who came along to give their support. (The Old Etonians faced no such restrictions.)

Still, a cup tie against Old Etonians was a big event for the town and money was found. Not that it initially made much difference as Darwen soon went 5-1 down. And then the unthinkable happened. The Old Etonians started to tire and Darwen came back; eventually, they equalised, and by full-time the Old Etonians were just hanging on. Most cup ties that ended in a draw went to extra time; the Old Etonian captain declined the offer of the extra 30 minutes, preferring a replay.

Nor was that the end of Old Etonian gamesmanship. The Old Etonians also declined Darwen's offer of £40 to stage the match in Darwen – presumably once they did know where the town was, they had no desire to visit it – and instead offered the Lancastrians £25 to return to London the following weekend. The FA, as spineless then as it is now, did nothing to intervene. So once again Darwen was forced to shell out for expenses the club and its players could barely afford. The result was again a 2-2 stalemate, and once more the Old Etonians refused to travel north. For the third replay, with cash increasingly tight, Darwen travelled down on the overnight train, arriving on the morning of the game. This time they lost comprehensively.

Underdogs: The Unlikely Story of Football's First FA Cup Heroes by Keith Dewhurst – review

John Crace revisits a sporting clash between workers and Old Etonians

www.theguardian.com

 

[Gary James]

Oh, it's a pet hate of mine. Nowadays it does go down as a draw but before OPTA started compiling stats it used to show as a 'win on penalties etc.' There was a whole discussion on this a few years back when one of City's sequence records was made and a journalist quoted someone at Opta and the whole thing was written to make it look as if City were 'cheating the system' by claiming a win in the sequence when it was a win on penalties and therefore in their terms a draw. I dug out sequence records that both Utd (for a Fergie winning sequence) and Arsenal had claimed which included a win on penalties. Both of these had been heralded as major achievements without anyone saying the club was manipulating stuff.

The main argument used against City I challenged and I contacted various longstanding statisticians (I was a life member of the Association of Football Statisticians and all I contacted agreed that it should be a win in sequence records) and IFAB for them to confirm whether wins on penalties can be included in sequence records. David Elleray (I've edited this - earlier I said it was Howard Webb but it was Elleray) replied and said yes they should as penalties were used to determine the winner. I posted this. About a year or so after that a journalist (can't remember if it was the same one) did a piece on how MCFC had these false records and he contacted IFAB (which he claimed had not been done before) and this time IFAB said it was not a win BUT the journalist missed the argument that it was in sequence records that was the issue.

The argument goes that including wins on penalties isn't fair because it over promotes a record BUT how ridiculous is it that City (or anyone else) lose a match on penalties but Pep's/City's unbeaten sequence record continues?

Whether it's in or out isn't an issue to me so long as there's consistency and in the past a win or defeat on penalties was included as a win/loss not as a draw in records. Today OPTA and others do not - but there are inconsistencies done to suit a story being promoted.

The reason it changed was because the spreadsheets used were black or white - win/loss/draw not really able to cope with 'won on penalties'. So adding up number of wins/losses etc. was easier their way.

Personally, I don't like technology (or lack of it) determining something like this. To me wins on penalties feel like wins and teams progress. Defeats on penalties feel like defeats. None of them ever feel like a draw. I did say to one journalist 'next time City get knocked out of something on penalties go up to Pep and ask him if he feels happy with the draw and see what reaction you get'.

I wrote this a few years back (there's a link to the Arsenal sequence record that includes wins on penalties within this too):

Consecutive Win Records – Facts or Fiction?​

Manchester City’s victory over Swansea last night in the FA Cup (3-1 on 10th February 2021) caused a number of fans, media outlets and statisticians to question the record set by City in 2017. Between August 26 and December 3, 2017 Pep’s Blues managed a 20 game winning run that included a League...

gjfootballarchive.com

 

[Gary James]

Here's part of what David Elleray at IFAB emailed to me in November 2017:

As you correctly state, kicks from the penalty mark are a method of determining the winner of a match ( or tie) when the scores are level.
QED if any team plays any match which required KFPM and they win that 'event' they win the match.

Best wishes

David

David Elleray
Technical Director of The IFAB

 

[johnnytapia]

Here's part of what David Elleray at IFAB emailed to me in November 2017:

As you correctly state, kicks from the penalty mark are a method of determining the winner of a match ( or tie) when the scores are level.
QED if any team plays any match which required KFPM and they win that 'event' they win the match.

Best wishes

David

David Elleray
Technical Director of The IFAB

Shouldn’t he have been teaching? Lazy ****. Anyway, back to 5th week of my summer hols...