Ryan O'Hanlon, ESPN.com writerNov 29, 2024, 10:00 AM
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Pep Guardiola and Man City are looking as bad as they've ever looked together. How did things get here? Carl Recine/Getty Images
Is it a high bar or a low bar to clear? Either way, we're currently witnessing the worst season of Pep Guardiola's managerial career.
Since 2010, which is as far back as Stats Perform's dataset extends, Guardiola has managed 491 league matches across Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City, and his teams have won 1,177 points. That averages out to about 2.4 points per game; over a 38-game season, that adds up to about 91 points.
To put that into context: the team many consider to be the best in the history of the Premier League, Arsenal's Invincibles of 2003-04, won 90 points. In other words, the average Guardiola team was better than the only Premier League team that lasted an entire season without losing a game.
Of course, Pep's newest team has already lost five matches across all competitions. And through 12 league games this season, City have won 23 points, at an average of 1.92 points per game. If they keep it up for the remaining 26 matches, they'll win 73 points, well below the worst full-season tally of Guardiola's career: the 78 points a transitional, aging City squad won in his first season in England. Even with Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga, where they play only 34 matches, his teams never won fewer than 79 points.
The sky is falling...and City are still in second place, a position almost any other club in England would be glad to occupy. Such is the floor when you combine the best manager of the modern era with a boundary-pushing ownership group funded by sovereign wealth.
But after winning four straight league titles, City are already eight points back of first-place Liverpool. And now they get to play Liverpool at Anfield, where Guardiola has won only once in nine tries. It's a chance to claw back points, but it's also their most difficult fixture of the season. Come the start of December, City could easily be 11 points off the pace.
How did we get here? Let us rank the reasons.