In the 2011-12 title-winning season, Manchester City lost their fourth league game of the year on March 11. In 2012-13, they lost their fourth league game on March 16. In neither season did they lose their first league game until December.
This season, Man City just lost their fourth league game of the year. All have been on the road. It's November 10.
Over the past several years, City have been more reliable at home than on the road, but that's hardly surprising - most clubs play better at home (occasional oddities like this year's West Ham excepted). This year, though, their road form has been woeful. It's one thing to cough up a few over the course of the year - City have played six road games so far this campaign and have managed a single win (at Upton Park against the aforementioned West Ham, a 3-1 victory in a battle of the Resistible Force and the Movable Object based on the clubs' respective forms). They're 1-1-4 on the road. More troubling still, three of the four losses can be chalked up to shocking defensive breakdowns - City led 1-0 at Cardiff before conceding three times in the space of half an hour, twice on headers to the same player; they led 1-0 and 2-1 at Villa Park before giving up two goals in three minutes; and they were in line for a hard-fought and well-deserved point at Chelsea before a shocking miscommunication between Joe Hart and Matija Nastasic in stoppage time gifted Fernando Torres the winning goal and resulted in Hart getting dropped as the #1 keeper. Regular service appeared to have been restored with a win at Newcastle in the Capital One Cup (albeit one that took extra time to get resolved), and dominant performances at home against Norwich (7-0) and CSKA Moscow (5-2) made everyone feel better.
And then came today's game, the fourth consecutive 1-0 loss at Sunderland, the goal again owed to a defensive miscue. The Stadium of Light has proven to be a bogey location in recent years for City, but this year's Sunderland team is worse than those past; currently sitting 19th, they had one win coming into today and had scored seven goals while conceding 22. There's generally no shame in a narrow road loss against a team that has set up to defend, but this City team just scored 12 goals in their last two games. Yet this was already their second road shutout of the season (after a 0-0 draw at Stoke in September that at least earned a point), and to a club currently anchored in the relegation zone. In fact, only one of City's four losses this year has come to a club in the top ten - and that was against Chelsea, arguably the least deserved loss of the four.
The season is by no means over. With 19 points, City sit in eighth - but there are 27 games, well over two-thirds of the season, yet to be played, and they are a mere three points behind third-place Southampton (and you will forgive me for not feeling that Southampton are a real threat to finish the year in Champions League position). Too, City are into the knockout stages of the Champions League for the first time, and rather comfortably at that - but having been embarrassed by Bayern Munich in their first group meeting (and that at home), they have yet to really look like a threat to actually win the competition as pundits have been predicting for years.
Frankly, first-year manager Manuel Pellegrini must be heaving a sigh of relief at the ease with which City have qualified for the CL knockouts, because his head would quite likely be on the chopping block already were they once again in danger of failing to progress - the failure to move out of the group stage was undoubtedly a key contribution to the sacking of Roberto Mancini at the end of last season, and Pellegrini's historical overachievement with teams possessing considerably less raw talent than City was equally undoubtedly a key reason why he was hired.
Yet that raw talent has only fitfully been on display. City's home form - 6-0-1 in all competitions, with a scoring record of 31 for and 7 against - has, with the notable exception of the Bayern loss, been stellar. Then there's the road form - 4-1-4 in all competitions, with a scoring record of just 15 goals for and 11 against. City are averaging nearly five goals a game at home (and exactly five if you throw out the Bayern game); on the road, they average less than two. Playing on the road is harder, but is it THAT much harder?
Some of the issue has surely come through injury; the back line seems to shift from game to game, hardly giving the players a chance to get used to each other, and this lack of familiarity has clearly been exposed at times. (Of course, there's no reason why Hart and Nastasic shouldn't have been able to be on the same page against Chelsea.) Counting the keeper, the City defense has been the same in back to back league games just once this season, and Vincent Kompany - the team captain in addition to its best defender, though he bore significant culpability for the Villa loss - has missed most of the games so far. The central defense has at times included Javi Garcia, a holding midfielder woefully unqualified for the role into which he was forced. Martin Demichelis, snapped up late in the transfer window in an attempt to add depth at the back, has only recently come back into the team, and he has not looked especially good so far. For all of City's offensive weapons, for all the money spent on players over the past several years, the defense has really failed at times - despite the fact that it is fundamentally the same defense that has led the league in fewest goals conceded for three years running. The injuries haven't helped. But the depth has not been there.
The last time City lost its fourth game this early in the season, it was 2008-09, and City lost a 3-2 heartbreaker at home to Liverpool. The only player who started that day and today was Micah Richards; the only other players on the team then who are still employed by City are Hart, Zabaleta, and Kompany. This was during the first few months of the Mark Hughes era; the goal scorers for City were Stephen Ireland (now with Hughes at Stoke, three clubs later) and Javier Garrido (currently at Norwich after a stop at Lazio in Serie A). None of those three men have been employed by the club since the 2009-10 season.
So what happened in the 2008-09 season? City lost a total of 18 games that year, finishing in tenth place. It's hard to see the same thing happening with this year's City squad - they have way more talent (even with a few names in common, the list of players who started for City that year includes almost no one who could get into this year's team - Richard Dunne might be useful at the back, and Nigel De Jong is probably capable of playing the Javi Garcia role, and Robinho would surely get some games, but that's about it aside from the four already mentioned), and although this looks like the most balanced Premier League table for a while, I don't see how superior talent won't rise to the top. On the other hand, City's MO over the past few years has been to start like a house on fire, slump a bit over the winter, and then finish strong (not so much last year on that last part, but certainly the previous two). There's not much room to slump over the winter when you've already slumped in the fall.
It's too early to panic, for sure. But it's not too early to start wondering about why this is happening and what exactly needs to change. Perhaps some strengthening of the defense is called for during the January window, but that alone doesn't explain City's road form. They looked sloppy and tired for the first hour-plus against Sunderland today. Some of that is the loss of David Silva, but again, there's way too much money involved for this to be a team so wounded by the loss of one player (though it's noteworthy that he also missed the Stoke game - but then again he didn't play in the 4-1 win over United either, as comprehensive a victory as City have had this year). If Pellegrini thought he was just going to show up and the machine was going to run itself to victory, he's clearly been proven wrong. Now is the time to prove that he's the brilliant tactician who led small-money clubs like Malaga and Villarreal to deep runs in the Champions League and won 96 points (though not the league) in his one year at Real Madrid.
City's next five league matches will tell us a fair amount. They face both Spurs and Arsenal at home (along with Swansea), and have road matches against West Brom (who have already claimed one big scalp this year at Old Trafford and should have had another at Stamford Bridge) and current high-flyers Southampton (who lead the league in fewest goals conceded with just five in their first eleven games). Silva will miss most or all of those games; Kompany may be back for them (but he then needs to stay healthy). City simply cannot afford to lose more games right now. If they drop another two or three of those five (or, God forbid, more), Pellegrini's head will be on the block no matter how the Champions League is going, and it will surely be deserved.
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