The Maths That Proves Manchester City Is Weaker And Needs Signings

Winning five out of the past six Premier League titles tends to alter people’s perceptions.

But the truth of the matter is Manchester City is weaker than last year.

Captain Ilkay Gundogan has left for Barcelona and experienced winger Riyad Mahrez transferred to Al-Ahli, likely joining them out the door are Joao Cancelo and Aymeric Laporte.

The lazy and quite frankly ill-informed view is; the club can absorb such departures with ease as they have two starting XIs who could compete in the Premier League.

Indeed many pundits attributed City’s squad depth as the key factor in the club being able to overhaul Arsenal in the title race last season.

“When you actually look at Arsenal’s first 11 it’s not a million miles away from Manchester City’s,” claimed former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher.

“They play a similar sort of style but when they’re bringing players from the bench to change a game, Saka’s played every game and I think he played every game as well last season. So, some of your top players can’t play all the time.

“Kevin de Bruyne doesn’t play every single game for Manchester City and for me, he’s probably been the best player in the Premier League for the last four or five years. The biggest disappointment will be the second half of the season, it’s been a massive drop-off and we can’t deny that.”

But the reality is this simply isn’t true. Yes, the quality in the Manchester City squad is undoubted, but the so-called depth is not all extensive as people are ready to believe.

A look at the data behind the Treble winning season makes that point even more definitively.

Numbers don’t lie

Manchester City played a total of 61 games last season and nine players featured in around 80% of those games, including Kevin De Bruyne who played 49 times.

Five of those players, who were younger or occupied a role considered less easily replaceable, featured over 90% of the time. The two standouts of which are Rodri, who had 56 appearances, and Bernardo Silva, who played 55 games.

Erling Haaland, Ilkay Gundogan and Jack Grealish also clocked up over 50 appearances.

Those percentages become even higher when you consider City qualified from its Champions League group with three games to spare and were crowned Premier League winners with a trio of matches remaining.

Delete those dead rubbers and the fixture total is 55.

This means Rodri and Bernardo were basically never rested, while the other three appeared in 95% of games where the outcome mattered. A further four players were given one game off in 10.

That by anyone’s reckoning is not squad rotation.

The truth is last season it wasn’t so much the depth that got them through as a fortuitous run with injuries.

Only Nathan Ake suffered a knock at at a crucial point in the season, players like Haaland and Rodri missed odd games but were never out for any lengthy spell.

The difference between Arsenal and Manchester City was not so much that the latter had greater depth but that it didn’t suffer injuries in positions where it was lacking backup.

Arsenal struggled when William Saliba and Gabriel Jesus got injured, City may well have done too had Rodri, Bernardo Silva or, indeed, Erling Haaland been on the sidelines.

If we are being kinder than saying that’s just luck we perhaps can credit the medical as Guardiola did post defeating Aston Villa near the turn of the year. “We have an incredible methodology for training to manage the fatigue and avoid injuries,” he explained, “We have incredible doctors and physios and everyone. I fight for that for many years.”

But complaints about squad depth from Guardiola receive almost mocking coverage even in outlets historically considered independent.

News service Reuters somehow managed to conflate squad value with depth when reporting on comments from the Catalan coach in February.

“Guardiola’s current squad is valued at $1.12 billion by website Transfermarkt and on Sunday he started with the likes of England internationals Kalvin Phillips and Phil Foden and Argentina striker Julian Alvarez on the bench,” the agency wrote.

“Yet the Spaniard claimed he is working with a squad of less than 20 players as they chase league leaders Arsenal and attempt to win the Champions League for the first time.”

It’s a pretty extraordinary tone for an outlet, which prides itself on “integrity, independence, and freedom from bias,” to strike but then again City fans would claim they are always treated unfairly.

Regardless of what the perception might be the small squad will this summer shrink further.

If reinforcements are not brought in Guardiola will be left to rely on his medical team to work miracles, if they don’t perhaps finally the rest of the world might see what the cold hard appearance data makes clear.