By Opta Analyst | Created at 2024-11-26 09:49:48 | Updated at 2024-11-26 18:46:14
8 hours ago
Having held top spot in the Opta Power Rankings since March 2023, Manchester City’s heavy defeat to Tottenham saw them lose their crown as the best team in the world.
Manchester City have been so good for so long under Pep Guardiola that it had been easy to take their brilliance for granted – but that’s only made their sudden collapse all the more spectacular.
Admittedly, a City fan might use a different adjective, and perhaps “collapse” is a little dramatic – who’s to say they can’t go on and still have a successful season? It’s only November, after all.
Nevertheless, from a neutral’s perspective, the past few weeks have humanised City and Guardiola. The man and the team who’ve so often seemed to have the answers for practically everything are enduring a run not seen since before the Abu Dhabi Royal Family began pouring their petrodollars into the club.
Saturday’s 4-0 defeat at home to Tottenham in the Premier League was notable for a variety of reasons.
Firstly, it ended City’s 52-game unbeaten run across all competitions at the Etihad Stadium, where they’d not lost since defeat to Brentford in the league in November 2022.
But further to that, it was Guardiola’s joint-biggest loss (fourth by four goals) in his managerial career, City’s heaviest home defeat (any competition) since February 2003 and the first time in over 18 and a half years that they’d lost five games in a row. Stuart Pearce was in charge back then.
Before their 2-1 defeat at Brighton prior to the international break, Guardiola had never even lost four successive games as a manager. Feyenoord at home in the UEFA Champions League on Tuesday offers a chance at some respite and an opportunity to end this alarming run, though Sunday’s trip to Liverpool will be in the back of fans’ minds.
In short, Man City’s run of results is unprecedented in this more glamorous era of the club’s history – just as it is a new experience for the man regarded as the greatest manager on the planet.
A consequence of City’s form is that they’ve finally lost their spot atop the Opta Power Rankings, with both Inter and Liverpool overtaking them on Sunday. Inter are now rated as the best team in the world, only just ahead of Arne Slot’s Reds.
The Opta Power Rankings is a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 men’s domestic football teams and over 2,000 women’s domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Now, some of you are probably thinking that in the grand scheme of things City aren’t going to care in the slightest about dropping a little down the Opta Power Rankings; fair enough, you may be right. However, City and Guardiola want to be the best there is, and this change reflects the idea that they no longer are. They should care about that.
City had been top of the pile for well over 18 months. They took top spot on 11 March 2023 and held onto it for 624 days.
It’s a period that comprised two Premier League titles, their maiden Champions League crown and an FA Cup success. In fact, three of those were won during the 2022-23 season alone, securing the club a historic treble.
Although they only won the league title last season, City continued to reign supreme at the top of the Opta Power Rankings. Even when being eliminated from the Champions League at the quarter-final stage by Real Madrid, City were still looked to as the standard bearers for most in European football.
While a run of five results doesn’t exactly undo years of greatness, evidence of City’s new-found fallibility will lead to talk about the fall of an empire et cetera, regardless of Guardiola signing a new contract last week.
Sure, such chatter could very plausibly turn out to be extremely premature, but City do look rather less imperious.
Further highlighting this is the fact two teams have gone above City in the Opta Power Rankings, thus pushing Guardiola’s men down to third. As such, it’s the first time they’ve been outside the top two clubs in the world since 28 December 2021. So, nearly three years.
Of course, City are going through something of an injury crisis, which is a completely understandable explanation for their recent difficulties. Similarly, you doubt or underestimate Guardiola and City at your peril.
They’ll likely be back on top again in the not-too-distant future, such is the quality in their squad and the winning mentality coursing through their team.
But for the time being, Guardiola must find answers and harness his genius. What happens next will surely make for fascinating viewing.
Enjoy this? Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You can also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
