The Title Race - 2024/25

[Inter Me Nan]

Well, I know this much.
We may not be playing particularly well, but we're certainly not playing worse than we were at this stage last year. People forget. Think on this…
We really struggled to beat Sheffield United, then got a fairly comfortable series of victories. But it's noticeable that we kept shipping goals. Clean sheets were rare. We were put out of the League Cup towards the end of September by Newcastle, then beaten in short order by Wolves and Arsenal. By early October we'd been beaten twice. Furthermore, not very convincing performances which involved the shipping of goals continued until late into the autumn, because we drew against Spurs at our place, Chelsea at theirs, Liverpool and Palace at our place (in all cases, shipping goals), and were defeated for the third time before Christmas at Villa in early December. Really not a particularly scintillating autumn.
There are problems, most obviously the screening of the defence by two fine footballers who are neither of them in the first flush of youth, to put it mildly. But we are towards the end of October, and unbeaten. I think our two rivals have both got weaknesses, but the media get giddy about Arsenal, then get giddy about Liverpool, on alternate weeks, simply because they just want to see anyone beat City to the title. The headlines this morning are instructive: ‘Liverpool can go all the way’ because Micah Richards says so (yeah, thanks for that insight, Micah), but, grudgingly, there was ‘drama’ at Molineux (sub-text: City stole it). There was no drama whatsoever at Molineux, and if Chelsea had anyone apart from Palmer who can finish properly that would have been a draw at Anfield. One becomes weary of the way the media constantly puts its thumb in the pan to weigh down the scales. But it will continue… sigh.
I think this guy from Catalonia will find the solution to the defensive midfield. I also think he'll renew. And hearts will sink in Liverpool and north London when he does.

Top post.

 

[St Helens Blue (Exiled)]

Tarquins v Dippers next week.

Do our job on Saturday and hopefully watch them play out a bore draw

 

[BlueAnorak]

Well unless we stop conceding stupid goals like we are we aren't going to win the league.
2 games on the bounce (Fulham and Wolves) where we could easily have drawn.
At some point our luck will not hold against defensively solid sides.
Liverpool would destroy us on the counter. Probably Villa too.

 

[spacecadet]

We have played for years without a left back. The little Catalonian scamp is now trying to win it without a right back, at the same time as well.

 

[nmc]

BBC in full on Dipper wankathon today….

 

[bluemoon32]

I still think Arsenal are our biggest threat for the title

 

[Ducado]

I know what it takes mate. My point was neither City, Arsenal or Liverpool are playing well enough to make a prediction.

City and Arsenal both have key players out, Liverpool have been ok injury wise but their squad is a little light imo.

No one is really pulling up trees at the moment in terms of quality at the top I think it may be a poor season

 

[thismeansfour]

Well unless we stop conceding stupid goals like we are we aren't going to win the league.
2 games on the bounce (Fulham and Wolves) where we could easily have drawn.
At some point our luck will not hold against defensively solid sides.
Liverpool would destroy us on the counter. Probably Villa too.

You can include Brentford in that too. We haven't played well since August. Thankfully we have got the points on the board. This tends to happen most seasons to be fair. We know when we usually kick into gear.

 

[Blu3m00n91]

Our defence will win us the league. Akanji Dias Ake Gvardiol.

 

[Cobwebcat]

There’s no such thing as luck.

Much like karma, omens, signs, destiny, fate, jinxes, hoodoos, curses and magic… luck doesn’t exist.

What people describe as ‘luck’ is just preparation meeting opportunity. If you never give up and work hard until the end of the game to score the winner, there is a possibility it will happen.

I do agree though, there’s nothing about us outside that work ethic that makes us look like a team that would usually win the league. We look so far behind the quality of our football we used to have in either the 2017-18 Centurions season or the 2018-19 Fourmidables season, and we look nowhere near the goal threat we did then.

It is understandable when our ideal starting midfield of Rodri, Foden and de Bruyne aren’t starting games and looking back to then our starting midfield was Fernandinho, DSilva and de Bruyne. Due to players being out it’s currently Kovačić, Gündoğan and BSilva who - despite being similar in age to Fernandinho and DSilva from 2017 to 2019 - are all looking like their best years are well behind them.

But there’s something else that feels like it’s missing and that’s an abundance of creators and goal scorers. Our biggest goal threats outside Haaland are currently Kovačić, Gvardiol and Stones (none of which are even attacking players). When we used to have Agüero, Jesus, Sterling, Mahrez, Sané, de Bruyne, DSilva and a younger Gündoğan… who all contributed to goal threats.

Doku, Savinho and current Gündoğan simply aren’t doing enough. Grealish is looking like a bigger goal creating and scoring threat in cameos at the end of games (Arsenal at home, yesterday) than those three combined from starting games.

A number of windows where we’ve brought in players no better or not as good as our challengers have, has seen us level out with them now.

However, de Bruyne and Foden will be back playing soon and we have one thing over all the other teams in Pep that still sets us apart, so there’s still a chance that it’ll click when they are back in the team in good form.

To answer the OP’s question, I feel like this will be a close and lower points achieving season at the top than we’ve seen for many of the seasons under Pep. Say, 85 points for the winner, because I just don’t think there are any special teams at the moment and I think all the top sides will drop points against more teams than we usually would.

Apologies but I only got as far as your top line.

There is a thing called luck it describes an improbable event.

Football is a great example as it’s a low scoring game. A long time ago I went to City v Bolton at the Etihad. Never seen anything like it and perhaps others on here remember it. I don’t have the figures so I’m guessing but City had about 30 shots to Bolton’s 1. We hit the post 3 times and hit the bar twice. It was cleared of the line numerous times, once by one of our own players I think. In the last seconds Bolton were awarded a penalty, scored and won with their only shot. Typical City if ever there was a game!

Given everything that had happened, Bolton winning was extremely improbable.

Every footy club now has a data analytics department. One of the first things they do is look at performance v result. The difference between what should have happened (and therefore more likely to happen in the future) and the actual result is luck.

Some people understood this earlier than others and made a lot of money from predicting future results by stripping the luck, as much as they could, out of the result.

So far this season City have been more lucky than they have for a while. All this means is if we carry on with their current level of performance, we will start to drop more points than we have so far. Of course that might not happen as Pep could quite easily improve our performance levels.

But there is such a thing as luck.