It’s part of the football circus these days that occasional defeats are greeted as devastating occurences. Social media goes into meltdown; shock jock style radio stations begin to predict the end of eras and even the BBC seems to take a ‘your all doomed’ approach if you lose a game. After City’s narrow defeat at Villa last week the BBC’s website stated: ‘In the context of the title race, there are concerning signs for City’ and elsewhere on the BBC there were fans quoted complaining about the weaknesses in the team. So, to take a more reasoned view I decided to take a look at the 2020-21 season when similar reporting occurred of City’s games. Back then pundits like the former Arsenal player Martin Keown were highly critical of City. After five games of the 2020-21 season City were 12th and Keown said: ‘there’s certainly some rebuilding to be done. We will see how good Pep really is now; he’s got to rebuild the team.’
Those Keown comments are similar to some being aired at the moment about City being rebuilt etc. Pep proved back then (I wonder if he chatted to Keown about his comments in 2020?) how good he was.
Back in 2020-21 City lost to Tottenham in their eighth League game. That put Spurs top and some began predicting the London club may manage to actually win the league. Similarly, some predicted that City were too unpredictable to lift the title. The statistic often quoted that weekend was that City’s points total of 12 from eight games was the club’s lowest at that stage since 2008-09. Very similar style comments to this season when the BBC quoted (after the Villa defeat): ‘City have lost three of their opening nine games in the Premier League this season (W5 D1), with the Cityzens last suffering more defeats at this stage of a league campaign in 2008-09 (four).‘
As a direct comparison it’s worth noting that City are two points behind where they were five years ago, and in both seasons faced criticism. Remarkably City ended up winning the Premier League in 2020-21 by 12 points and the early season leaders Spurs finished seventh. Some pundits and journalists would later rewrite history and go on to talk as if the 2020-21 title race had been a foregone conclusion with City ‘dominating football’ like no other team had ever done before (it was ‘bad’ for football, blah, blah blah). They talked negatively about other teams not standing a chance etc. but that is so wrong.
So, what am I going on about. Well, if 2020-21 shows us anything it is that no league title is decided so early in the season. Nor does a defeat mean all is lost. City are currently two points behind where they were in that remarkable 2020-21 season, when they won the title by 12 points. Imagine if that happened again? I know it’s doubtful and Arsenal are certainly a better team than they were back then and Spurs were too. But football’s unpredictable and anything is possible.
For those wondering here are 2020-21’s results at this stage followed by a table with this season’s:
| Date | Opponent | Venue | Result | Points |
| 21/09/2020 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | A | 3-1 | 3 |
| 27/09/2020 | Leicester City | H | 2-5 | 0 |
| 03/10/2020 | Leeds United | A | 1-1 | 1 |
| 17/10/2020 | Arsenal | H | 1-0 | 3 |
| 24/10/2020 | West Ham United | A | 1-1 | 1 |
| 31/10/2020 | Sheffield United | A | 1-0 | 3 |
| 08/11/2020 | Liverpool | H | 1-1 | 1 |
| 21/11/2020 | Tottenham Hotspur | A | 0-2 | 3 |
| 28/11/2020 | Burnley | H | 5-0 | 3 |
| Total | 18 |
Here’s this season’s results:
| Date | Opponent | Venue | Result | Points |
| 16/08/2025 | Wolves | A | 4-0 | 3 |
| 23/08/2025 | Spurs | H | 0-2 | 0 |
| 31/08/2025 | Brighton | A | 1-2 | 0 |
| 14/09/2025 | Utd | H | 3-0 | 3 |
| 21/09/2025 | Arsenal | A | 1-1 | 1 |
| 27/09/2025 | Burnley | H | 5-1 | 3 |
| 05/10/2025 | Brentford | A | 1-0 | 3 |
| 18/10/2025 | Everton | H | 2-0 | 3 |
| 26/10/2025 | Aston Villa | A | 0-1 | 0 |
| Total | 16 |
Gary James' Football Archive 