City’s miserly defence has become generous
AT the start of December, a statistical look at Manchester City concluded that Pep Guardiola had assembled the greatest Premier League team ever.
After 13 games they had conceded just five goals and, at the time of the piece, had gone three months without conceding from open play by conceding fewer than two shots on target per game.
It was an absurdly good record but it has all gone wrong in five games this month where they have conceded eight goals and lost twice to be on the wrong end of a six-point swing at the top of the table.
Despite the absence of a clean sheet since November 24, City’s manager played down the idea of an issue with his defence after the 3-2 defeat to Crystal Palace.
“Against Southampton they had three more shots than Palace had on target and we won 6-1,” he countered.
“We try to play to concede as few as possible but sometimes football is the only game where the statistics don’t count. The only one that counts is the goals scored.”
This is fair, and if a team scores three goals from three shots on target you can consider yourself unlucky (although the manager’s claim that his players created enough chances to win on Saturday is more dubious).
Still, if it happens regularly - as it did in his first season at the Etihad you can do something about it: work the players harder and/or buy better players.
The problem for Guardiola is that City’s defensive issues do not stem from a single cause.
Bournemouth and Chelsea were broadly similar to Saturday in that they scored more goals than both the amount they worked Ederson and the quality of their chances deserved. Eddie Howe’s men scored from their only shot on target and while City conceded five shots on target at Stamford Bridge those combined efforts did not add up to one whole expected goal.
Here, Guardiola could argue that his team were unfortunate to have let in three goals when their defensive work did not deserve that. But it was a different story against Watford and Everton.
Having dominated for so long at Vicarage Road, the Blues let it slip in the final half-hour and Watford could consider themselves unlucky to only score one when they managed seven shots on target. Marco Silva’s team only managed two at the Etihad but so good were their chances that they could and perhaps should have done better.
For a game that finished 3-1, there was 0.12 differences between the number of goals the two sides were expected to score. In those games, the reigning champions could be said to have had fortune on their side where sloppy defending has been bailed out by opposition profligacy or City’s own attacking prowess.
Some games or halves they are starting too slowly, others they are dropping off before the end. For these reasons, it does not appear straightforward to correct the small but myriad issues hurting the defensive record.
The saving grace for the Blues is that they know how to get back on track because they were doing it until December hit, when Aymeric Laporte and John Stones looked invincible and Ederson may as well have sat in the stands.