Manchester City’s months-long losing streak is put too much into context

There is no question that Manchester City is in crisis. When this crisis began is more controversial.

Was it the moment Rodri buckled his knee against Arsenal 70 days ago? Or it could have been when Pep Guardiola reacted to the narrow 1-0 home win against bottom-placed Southampton on October 26 by saying: “I will learn a lot from Russell (Martin, the visitors’ coach) because they really do have done.” So.”

That was a little over a month ago. Southampton have won (twice!) since then, City…not.

Future historians examining City’s results at the end of 2024 will assume that the crisis officially began the following midweek, when they lost a Carabao Cup tie at Tottenham, but many described this as a “good defeat” for an overloaded squad. An exit from the domestic competition that is least important to them would give City time and space to concentrate on the Premier League and the Champions League, the theory goes.

But three days later City lost again, 2-1, at Bournemouth, then 4-1 away to Lisbon’s Sporting CP in the Champions League, then 2-1 at Brighton and again to Spurs, this time 0 at home. 4. For the first time since the introduction of the iPhone, five defeats in a row. Even a 3-0 lead in a Champions League home game against Feyenoord of the Netherlands with just 15 minutes left on Tuesday somehow sparked even more horror.

Dominic Solanke and Timo Werner celebrate as Spurs knock City out of the Carabao Cup on October 30 (Nigel French/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)

These are unprecedented times for City – and football itself – so it’s certainly time to put what’s happening into (perhaps too much) context.

Football results have been recorded carefully and accurately since the 1870s, but November 2024 will surely be the only month in the history of the sport in which the San Marino national team wins more football matches than Pep Guardiola’s team. The emerging small state in central Italy beat Liechtenstein 3-1 on November 18 and has lost just three of its last six games, which, in case you need a reminder, is two fewer than City.

San Marino’s Dante Rossi fights for the ball during the win over Liechtenstein in September (Giuseppe Maffia/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)

The list of teams that have won a game in the English league or Carabao Cup/FA Cup since City’s last win is also informative.

In order of overall wins it is (take a deep breath): Six wins – Liverpool, Wycombe; five – Stockport; four – Charlton, Cheltenham, Leeds, Sheffield United; three – Reading, Wimbledon, Lincoln, Arsenal, Burton, Bolton, Manchester United, Tottenham, Middlesbrough, Exeter, Wrexham, Chelsea, Wigan, Burnley, Walsall, Newcastle, Morecambe, Birmingham, Watford, Accrington, Huddersfield, Swansea, Chesterfield, Harrogate , Peterborough; two – Blackpool, Barnsley, Stoke, Sheffield Wednesday, Bristol Rovers, Crawley, Cambridge, Carlisle, Salford, Orient, Bristol City, Luton, Tranmere, Mansfield, Colchester, Notts County, Swindon, Doncaster, Crystal Palace, Southampton, MK Dons, Brighton, West Ham, Blackburn, Millwall, Wolves, Fulham; one – Northampton, Norwich, Grimsby, Derby, Bromley, Port Vale, Cardiff, Coventry, Queens Park Rangers, Barrow, West Bromwich Albion, Plymouth, Oxford, Gillingham, Bradford, Rotherham, Fleetwood, Shrewsbury, Crewe, Brentford, Portsmouth, Bournemouth , Nottingham Forest, Ipswich, Kettering, Harborough, Oldham, Wealdstone, Dagenham and Redbridge, Solihull Moors and Tamworth. You’ll never sing that.

Need more context?

Well, how about the startling fact that the cup exit against Spurs on October 30th was not only the start of five consecutive defeats for City, but also the end of the longest run of five defeats they had in the Guardiola era? Five defeats in a year and 33 days between September 2023 and October 2024 and then… well, we know what happened next.

But there is more to this world than just football. People, for example. People.

The United Nations estimates that about 385,000 people are born every day. So if we date the start of City’s crisis to October 30th against Spurs, that means around 12,000,000 people have been born in north London since the defeat that night. Not everyone will become a City fan (yet), but it would be useful to know how many of these newborns might be. Can this be clarified? Yes.

As of July 2023, the Earth’s population was estimated at just over eight billion (8,091,734,930). Around the same time, City reported that its social media accounts had 132 million followers, representing 1.6 percent of all people on the planet. So of the 12,320,000 babies born since City’s crisis began, we can expect 197,120 to at least follow the club on social media, if not travel to the Etihad Stadium every fortnight. And please don’t judge these young players – City have literally never won a game in their lives, but they stick with it, just like the veterans who visited York and Wycombe in the club’s 1998/99 season were now League One.

And speaking of the long-suffering City fans, let’s not ignore what they’ve been through in recent weeks, from the fragile defense to Noel Gallagher co-communicating in Lisbon. City’s six-game winless streak spans 32 days, or about nine hours of actual on-field action. What could her supporters have done with this time instead?

Mark Slats after a solo sailing race around the world (Remko de Waal / ANP / AFP)

With 32 days remaining, one could have emulated the record for solo rowing across the Atlantic, held by Dutchman Mark Slats in a time of 30 days, seven hours and 49 minutes. How nice it would have felt to set off from the Canary Islands into the sea (which, let’s be honest, feels like a geographical excursion), the smell of salt water in the nose and a sense of calm about City’s November games . With the simple satellite phone available for sailing emergencies rather than score updates, you’ll sail calmly west as the City season continues south.

But who has 30 to 32 days left in their life?

It’s much easier to replace the nine hours of City toiling on the pitch with nine hours of… something else.

Theater fans might opt ​​for the rarely performed “Henriad,” which features Richard II, Henry IV Parts I and II, and Henry V back-to-back, the nine-hour Shakespeare version of those days when you would see multiple episodes of the Premier League in a row and I feel a bit drained. Or if you prefer the cinema, how about the award-winning 2002 film Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, which has a running time of nine hours and 11 minutes and, no joke, meticulously depicts the demise of a northern power plant ?

However you experienced this unexpected incident, it is inconceivable that it will last.

Guardiola will turn things around and the sheer extreme reaction (yes, including the words in this article) to what has been a disappointing few weeks for most football clubs is testament to how tirelessly his City side have operated for almost a decade.

(Top photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images)