You can find an abridged version of the following article at the official MCFC site
TRY GOOGLING “Manchester City away form” (don’t do this
at home, kids) and you will find yourself bombarded by a shocking variety of
headlines featuring the words “worried”, “perplexed”, at least one “bamboozled”,
“negative effect on the title”, "worried for the future", "no chance at all", "Javier Garcia Murdered my Uncle Theofilius" and “bringing down a plague of locusts on the
entire community of Greater Manchester”.
I may have made the last two up, but I'm pretty sure you get the approximate
picture. It is a calamity, wrapped up in a disaster, cushioned with grief and waiting to explode all over
us. Manuel Pellegrini’s hair, already a whiter shade of pale, must be turning peroxide with the worry.
Clearly, if anything can be said to be clear in football these days, City’s perfect home record is going a long way to
balancing out what is happening away from Fortress Etihad, but let us take a
minute or two to analyse the four away defeats that are providing so many people with ammunition at the moment.
Each one has been by a single goal.
3-2 at Cardiff and Villa, 2-1 at Chelsea and 1-0 at Sunderland. All close at the finish, despite City's evident profligacy upfront and hopelessness at the back..
The two matches, let us call them five goal thrillers for want of a more appropriate phrase (somebody
must have been thrilled by them, let’s face it), saw City leading in both and finishing
with overwhelming possession, corner, shots-on and -off stats (yes, I know, but
bear with me). Anyone who witnessed the Chelsea match will not be able to say
that defeat was deserved there either. City matched the home side overall in a feisty contest, beat them on all statistical data available and fell to an aberration when Joe Hart came out to collect Matija Nastasic instead of the ball.in the very last minute.
As for the Stadium of Lright last weekend, where do you start? Sunderland – the home side, lest we
forget- started the match in a kind of worried crab formation, scuttling backwards and
sideways, running away and half coming back again. They then scored a goal. One cannot really say that it was out of the blue, but to say it had been coming would received some funny looks from all around. They then reverted to scuttling about under their shell.
City had 63%
ball possession and made 574 passes to Sunderland’s 298. Martín Demichelis and
Aleksander Kolarov alone made more passes forward than Sunderland did. City had 24
shots to Sunderland’s 5. On top of everything, on a day when three of Jupiter’s
moons aligned themselves with the top of Romark’s bald head to cause what
experts call “severe confusion of the senses”, the winning goal was scored by David
Bardsley, ex-United reserve, local black sheep and a man who gets forward to
shoot at goal once every Blue Moon.
Most stunning of all, of the top 18 pass combinations
between players during the match, only two featured passes between home players
and that was only because one of the club’s sponsors demanded Ki be on the ball
from time to time. (Bardley to Ki, 10 times, and Ki to Brown ten times. I can
almost visualise that pretty triangle going round and round and round and back again until the ball rolled apologetically out into touch).
Haul your minds back to Cardiff, if you will. It’s ok, I’ll
hold your hand. There'll be no bother, I promise. 70% possession for City; 561 passes completed to the home side’s
191; 17 of the top 18 pass combinations between City players. 16 shots to 9. (Yawn).
And on to Villa Park if you will: 67% possession for City. 487 passes
completed to Villa’s 192; All eighteen of the top pass combinations during the
match were between City players! 13 corners to the home side’s 2.
Off we go to Stamford Bridge, where you might expect it to have been a
slightly different story. None of it. Although Chelsea, as you would expect, gave City a much tougher game than either Cardiff or Villa had managed to do, City had 54% of possession, had 6 of the match’s nine corners,
made 404 passes to the home side’s 332. Of the pass combinations, 12 of the top
18 were between City players.
Now, I love a stat as much as the next man. I understand that all of those little numbers can be made to jump about in your favour almost at will. George Osborne might be able to cover over a few cracks, but these
numbers tell a clear story of the Blues’ season so far on the road. Massive
amounts of possession, a vast majority of the successful passing, more corners,
more shots on goal than each of the hosts in each of the games. Much, much
more.
I can blather on about this for months but let's allow those beautiful numbers to do the hard work:
Opponent
|
City possession of the ball/Opponent
|
City shots on goal/opponent
|
City/opponent passses
completed
|
City top passing partnerships
|
Cardiff
|
70% /30%
|
16 - 9
|
561 - 191
|
17 out of top 18
|
Aston Villa
|
67% 33%
|
21 - 8
|
487 - 192
|
All 18 top passing combinations
|
Chelsea
|
54% 46%
|
15 - 12
|
404 - 332
|
12 out of top 18
|
Sunderland
|
63% 47%
|
24 - 5
|
574 - 298
|
18 out of top 20
|
Norwich City
|
68% 31%
|
27 - 7
|
711 - 292
|
17 out of top 18
|
The stats for the demolition of Norwich are not far beyond
what we see for the Cardiff, Villa and Sunderland matches. The Chelsea match delivers similar patterns in slightly more balanced terms. City actually had more possession at Cardiff than during the seven-nil stroll against Norwich. Norwich had more shots on goal losing 7-0 to City than Sunderland had beating us 1-0. Both Villa and Cardiff made significantly fewer passes in beating City than Norwich did in getting toasted. So, how can this be?
Is it down to Joe hart's dandruff endorsements? Or Javi Garcia's tug boat impersonations? Is it Yaya's off days or Señor Pellegrini's oddly taciturn configurations? Is it the Sun and Pluto in Uranus? Is it Vincent Kompany's hamstrings? Is it Romark having yet more revenge for Big Mal's early 70s shenanigans?
Maybe we should be looking - apart from the obvious individual errors and odd choice of players - at the one area of the side that nobody has mentioned yet: the attack. For all its 28 league goals, how many chances have been missed?
Experts blame the goalkeeper (now goalkeepers plural, after one paper decided Pantilimon should "take a look at himself" after Sunderland's winner last weekend), poor choice of tactics, inappropriate line-ups, lapses in defending
and the evil eye of Isabat al-’ayn but perhaps in reality it comes down to something
we have been aware of for decades.
And the two magic words will not be uttered here, if you don't mind too much.