Manchester City adds 20 points in the first 12 days of the Premier League. Although that figure allows them to be only five points behind the leader in the classification, the reality is that They are numbers very far from the best Pep Guardiola. The Catalan coach arrived at Manchester City more than four years ago, but I’ve never had a worse start to the league championship before. In fact, the dynamics are downward. Added to the absence of a goal in this course is the lack of points.
The 20 points that the ‘citizens’ add up at this start to the championship contrast with the 34 they achieved, for example, in the 2017/18 season, when they won the title reaching 100 points in the Premier League. Without going any further, this season more points have already been left than all those who were left that year. In 2018/19, when they were also proclaimed champions, they had 32 points at this point, up from the 25 they had won last year. In Guardiola’s first season in the Premier, the start was also better (27 points).
Last night’s draw against West Brom has reignited the alarms. A new game without winning, a new game without scoring many goals. The numbers are not deceiving. Manchester City is the lowest-scoring team in the top nine (18 goals for), but it saves him that at the same time he has the second best defense of the championship with only 12 goals conceded (Tottenham leads the list with 10 against). With five wins, five draws and two defeats, Guardiola’s men need to improve their performance at a time when the winter calendar is tightening with many meetings condensed in a few days. Precisely, the two lost games have been against rivals that are up in the standings: 2-5 against Leicester and 2-0 against Tottenham.
The data contrasts with his performance in the Champions League, where the ‘citizens’ have overcome the group stage with solvency adding 16 points out of 18 possible, only leaving a 0-0 draw against Porto when they were already classified for the round of 16, where they will face RB Leipzig. In the League Cup, finally, they will face Arsenal in the quarterfinals after having passed two rounds against Bournemouth and Burnley.
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