Blues will be looking to get off to a flier – for a change!
CITY will soon have a clearer idea of what their schedule will look like next season when the Premier League fixtures are revealed at 9am tomorrow.
The campaign is going to look a little different to previous seasons, largely because of the need to accommodate a mid-season World Cup.
The season will begin a week early on the weekend of August 6/7, and pause for a six-week break after the 16th round of fixtures on November 12/13.
The season will then resume on Boxing Day, eight days after the World Cup final, and will end on May 28.
Pep Guardiola will be hoping for a gentle run of opening fixtures to ease his side into the new season, but if recent history has taught us anything it’s that the most important thing is how you finish, not start.
Looking back over the last three seasons, it’s clear the Blues tend to start slowly and pick up speed as the season progresses.
In 2019/20 City took 13 points from their opening six games, in 2020/21 that tally fell to 11, before rising back to 13 in 2021/22. Clearly, Guardiola’s side take a while to move up through the gears.
City won the title in 2020/21 and 2021/22, yet in both it took several months for them to reach the top of the table.
The Blues endured a poor start to the former campaign, taking just 20 points from a possible 36 available, and it took them until the end of January 2021 to reach the top of the table. Yet from that point on, they didn’t relinquish that spot. It was a similar story last season. After a 2-0 home defeat to Crystal Palace left the defending champions five points off top spot with 20 points from 10 games, Guardiola’s side embarked on a winning run that saw them leapfrog Chelsea and Liverpool at the top in mid-December.
Again, the Blues didn’t let go from that point on, even if things did get a little too close to comfort. City started poorly in 2019/20, the difference being they did not recover and ended up finishing the season 18 points adrift of champions Liverpool. The Blues were unbeaten in the opening four outings, kicking things off with a thumping 5-0 win at West Ham, but soon things began to unwind with losses to Norwich, Wolves and Liverpool. In terms of individual opponents, City might want to avoid Spurs in their opening six games. The Blues faced them during the opening stretches of both 2019/20 and 2021/22, drawing 2-2 at the Etihad in their second outing of the former, and losing 2-0 in London in the opening game of the latter.
In their eighth match of the 2020/21
It’s clear the Blues tend to start slowly and pick up speed as the season progresses
campaign, City also lost 2-0 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
A ‘leaked’ fixture schedule suggests the Blues could be in for a tough start, but last season they actually reaped the benefits of that. They faced backto-back trips to Chelsea and Liverpool at the end of September 2021, but managed to win in London and draw 2-2 at Anfield, although arguably they should have won.
Taking points from those tricky trips early in the season set them up to embark on a 12-game winning streak later down the line, something which Liverpool could not overturn.
The upshot is City don’t tend to start seasons too well, no matter the perceived difficulty of the schedule. However, as proven by their exploits last September, they can deal with tough stretches if need be.