Tough start to the season compared to our rivals | December comparison (Pg10)

[MCFC1993]

After a great day I just thought I'd add even more context to the start of our season. Don't want it to go missing that the start to our season couldn't really have been any harder. Not easy when the majority of our lads got next to no rest over the summer.


Teams we've all faced in the top 10:

Chelsea - 26 points​	City - 23 points​	Liverpool - 22 points​	United - 17 points - lol​
Crystal Palace (H) - 9th​	Spurs (A) - 10th​	Chelsea (H) - 1st​	Wolves (A) - 8th​
Arsenal (A) - 6th​	Arsenal (H) - 6th​	Crystal Palace (H) - 9th​	West Ham (A) - 4th​
Liverpool (A) - 3rd​	Leicester (A) - 12th but traditionally top half​	City (H) - 2nd​	Leicester (A) - 12th but traditionally top half​
Spurs (A) - 10th​	Chelsea (A) - 1st​	United (A) - 5th​	Liverpool (H) - 3rd​
City (H) - 2nd​	Liverpool (A) - 3rd​	Brighton (H) - 7th​	Spurs (A) - 10th​
	Brighton (A) - 7th​	West Ham (A) - 4th​	City (H) - 2nd​
	Crystal Palace (H) - 9th​
	United (A) - 5th​

City - There is only Wolves and West Ham that we haven't faced in the top half yet (although we played the latter in the cup, away again) and we've played nearly all the decent sides away from home. We've only faced 20th (Norwich) & 18th (Burnley) in the bottom 7.

Chelsea - They've also played 20th, 19th (Newcastle), 18th, 15th (Leeds) & 14th (Brentford).

Liverpool - They've played 20th, 18th, 17th (Watford), 16th (Villa), 14th

United - Well...they're just shit but included them for laughs.


Project fivethirtyeight still makes us favourites with a 45% chance:

Premier League Predictions

FiveThirtyEight's Premier League predictions

projects.fivethirtyeight.com

We're also top of our Champions League group with PSG in it. It might look like an iffy start, not being top of the league and being out of the league cup but it's been a tough start to the season that we've handled really well.



Post updated to reflect Sunday's games.

 

[BringBackSwales]

Having played chelsea, dippers, rags, spurs and Leicester away, we have had far and away the most difficult start. Chelsea dropping points today was a nice bonus

 

[JASR]

https://www.soccerstats.com/team.asp?league=england&stats=20-manchester-city is a good website for looking at the table of 'results' vs position.

It's also shows how well/badly a team is doing compared to the same number of games in previous seasons.
eg we're +4 points compared to last season

 

[blue b4 the moon]

Could always be better but with nearly all our players at the Euros until the end, no pre-season etc I said if we were within 5/6 points from the top of the Prem after all those hard away games (what's the chances of that run of games? It's almost like they were trying to catch us cold) we'll win the league by a margin.

Being sadly out of the LC will also help us, every season we come out of a busy Xmas with less turnaround/more travelling than anyother club and have a double header semi.

 

[alexmcity]

The tough start to the season combined with injuries (e.g., Kevin, Foden, Stones.. ) and bad results at home (Southampton, Palace) have made pundits or fans somewhat blind to the enormous potential of this team. I think its cealing is probably higher than the 17-19 team.

Look at our performances at Chelsea, PSG, Liverpool and United. For big parts of these games, at their ground at that, we made them look very, very ordinary or even bad. The CL winners didn't have a shot on target and defended with 11 men behind the ball. The results in Paris and at Anfield didn't do justice to the performances. We were absolutely fantastic at times, as good as we have ever been under Pep, or probably even better.

These performances bode well for the future. The key is to keep Cancelo, Rodri and Bernie in superb form. Kevin has showed today he can be his old fantastic self. Hopefully some squad players will regain form as well. May be a very good season this.

 

[Metalartin]

I was thinking the same thing myself today. However, the Southampton and Crystal Palace performances and results should not be overlooked. If not for those, we'd be saying it's a great start to the season. So, as good as we've been in the big games, those were two winnable games where City didn't show up and we can't afford too many more of those types of performances.

 

[blueparrot]

I was thinking the same thing myself today. However, the Southampton and Crystal Palace performances and results should not be overlooked. If not for those, we'd be saying it's a great start to the season. So, as good as we've been in the big games, those were two winnable games where City didn't show up and we can't afford too many more of those types of performances.

All teams drop unexpected points, last week liverpool dropped 2 home to Brighton a team we beat away. This week chelsea dropped 2 home to burnley at team we beat. At the end it will probably the be the results against teams around us that decide it at we’re doing okay with that so far.

 

[LongsightM13]

I was thinking the same thing myself today. However, the Southampton and Crystal Palace performances and results should not be overlooked. If not for those, we'd be saying it's a great start to the season. So, as good as we've been in the big games, those were two winnable games where City didn't show up and we can't afford too many more of those types of performances.

Yep, the number of missing players meant we had a reasonable excuse for the Spurs result but Soton and Palace were really poor both in terms of results and performances

 

[Jazzman]

The tough start is not a coincidence in my opinion. The powers in charge deliberately tried to give their red favourites a head start hoping we would go so far behind that it would demoralize us. Did we play Chelsea and Liverpool away before and after PSG in the Champions League? That was just a joke and to me a clear attempt of sabotaging our season. Well guess what you FA fuckers. It didn't work.

 

[Metalartin]

All teams drop unexpected points, last week liverpool dropped 2 home to Brighton a team we beat away. This week chelsea dropped 2 home to burnley at team we beat. At the end it will probably the be the results against teams around us that decide it at we’re doing okay with that so far.

It's not just about the dropping of points in those games, that can happen as you say. The level of the team dropped and the performances didn't really merit any more than we got. It kind of undoes all the hard work the team have done in winning the bigger games. I'm sure Pep knows you can't ignore performances like that or brush them off. We normally have a couple of those every season but not so close together at the start of the season. I just hope the team remain focused for every game now, we could go on another winning streak if they do.