Manchester City's Season Could Depend on Pep Guardiola's First Christmas Period

Heading into the festive period seven points off leaders Chelsea won’t have been what Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola will have been aiming for after the fantastic start his side made to the season.

After 10 games in all competitions, City were unbeaten—having won all of their fixtures to that point. Premature judgements were being made by many, of course, because such a fine opening to a new campaign was always going to attract attention, especially after the club had spent so long courting the manager they’d just hired.

But after the 11th match—a 3-3 draw with Celtic in the Champions League—City’s performances seemed to dip in consistency. For the weeks before, they’d been fairly solid at the back and had been scoring chances for fun. In the weeks after, they were making fundamental defensive errors and couldn’t hit the target if their lives depended on it.

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After six games, Chelsea were eight points adrift of Guardiola’s team. In the 11 games since, they’ve picked up the maximum of 33 points—compared to City’s 18. It means the Stamford Bridge side will be top on Christmas Day, a position from which they’ve never not won the Premier League.

That doesn’t mean City are out of it, of course, though it does go to show how important this year’s festive period could be compared to those of years gone by.

Manuel Pellegrini’s Premier League title win came off the back of a fantastic winter run. In fact, between November 24, 2013 and January 29, 2014, City won 18 of their 20 matches across all competitions. The other two were draws.

The team that was ninth at the beginning of that run, nine points off leaders Arsenal, were second—and two points off the top—by the time they next lost. While City’s title that season came down to their ability to deal with the pressure at the end of the campaign and to Liverpool’s slip-ups against Chelsea and Crystal Palace, the groundwork for the championship was laid through the winter.

It’s the only time in recent years that the club has had a perfect Christmas period, too.

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The festive run began at Fulham. The eventual 4-2 victory will be remembered by the majority of City fans for perhaps the most comical of own goals the club has seen since Jamie Pollock flicked the ball up and nodded it over Martyn Margetson to help relegate his own team in 1998—something that wasn’t funny at the time, but given how things have turned out for City, it’s something that has become easier to laugh at down the years.

Quite how Vincent Kompany was able to find the back of his own net when a low ball was played into the City area is a mystery. He was facing the other way and was on the edge of the six-yard box—but a swipe with his left foot sliced it over his own head, lobbing Joe Hart in the process too and into the goal via the back post. Even Jesus Navas’ acrobatics on the line couldn’t keep it out.

It made the game 2-2, after City had been leading 2-0—but goals from Navas and James Milner wrapped up the victory and set the club off to a great start for the busy week-and-a-half to come.

Boxing Day saw perhaps one of the biggest results of the campaign, as Pellegrini’s side controversially took maximum points against Liverpool. The Reds had led 1-0 and could have had the chance to double their advantage when Raheem Sterling—playing for the visitors that day—was played clean through but wrongly flagged offside.

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City came back to win with goals from Kompany and Alvaro Negredo later in the first half, before shutting up shop and staying tight through the away side’s late onslaught. 

Tight wins against Crystal Palace and Swansea City were to follow, as Pellegrini stamped his authority on the league. The Eagles put up a strong fight at the Etihad but were undone by an Edin Dzeko strike and some top-class saves from Hart, while the Swans almost hit back with a late rally—Wilfried Bony, then with the Welsh side, scored late on to make it 3-2, but it wasn’t enough to stop City’s eventual victory.

The club’s previous top-flight title—in the 2011-12 campaign under Roberto Mancini—was built on anything but a solid foundation over Christmas, however. In contrast to Pellegrini’s perfect run two years later, it was City’s first real wobble of that title-winning season under the Italian.

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From a possible 12 points, they took seven. The first two fixtures were excellent results—Arsenal were dispatched 1-0 at the Etihad, again down to some fine goalkeeping from Hart, while Stoke City offered no resistance and succumbed to a 3-0 defeat in Manchester.

On Boxing Day, however, the travelling fans witnessed City’s first poor performance of the season. Expected to win comfortably, Mancini’s side could only struggle to a 0-0 draw at West Bromwich Albion—the first time they’d failed to score in a Premier League game since the previous April.

The traditional 1-0 defeat at Sunderland followed on New Year’s Day, getting 2012 off to a miserable start. City were top of the table on goal difference alone at the end of the evening, but they could have been three points ahead of rivals Manchester United after they’d surprisingly lost at home to Blackburn Rovers on New Year’s Eve.

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It was a last-minute winner that beat City, too—Ji Dong-Won’s strike came with just four seconds of stoppage time left. There was just about time for the visitors to kick off before the final whistle blew.

Despite that setback, City still went on to win the league.

The Christmas period didn’t really set the tone for the club’s two Premier League title defences, either. In 2012-13, under Mancini, they took nine points from a possible 12—losing only to Sunderland, again 1-0 at the Stadium of Light. The manager joked that they’d not bother going the next season because the result always seemed to be inevitable.

But wins over Reading, Norwich City and Stoke kept the defending champions in touch with rivals United, who led the table by seven points on New Year’s Day. It was the poor form in the second half of the season that allowed Sir Alex Ferguson’s team to romp away with the title.

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Pellegrini’s title defence was the same—he was actually dead level with leaders Chelsea on New Year’s Day 2015. After 20 matches, both had won 14, drawn four and lost two, and both had scored and conceded the same amount of goals. Chelsea were top on alphabetical order and, had it been the final table of the season, the two sides would have met in a special play-off game to decide who took the crown.

That Christmas, the Chilean had a striker problem, following injuries to all of Sergio Aguero, Dzeko and Stevan Jovetic—meaning the wins over Crystal Palace and West Brom were all the more impressive, the latter being noteworthy for the amount of snow that covered the pitch in the second half.

Burnley and Sunderland posed problems for City at the Etihad, though. In both, the home side were 2-0 up—the Clarets stole a 2-2 draw, while City needed a late Frank Lampard winner after squandering their lead against the Black Cats.

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City’s recent history suggests that little significance should be placed on the club’s performance over the festive period. However, it’s worth noting that each time they’ve won the league they weren’t seven points adrift of the leaders in late December no matter how they performed.

It’s not an impossible task for Guardiola to recover, but he’s going to need a sustained run of good results if he’s to close the gap to the leaders. At the moment, Chelsea’s performances are giving many an ominous feeling about where the title will end up in 2017—City need to produce something similar and quickly. 

When better to start than during the busiest spell of the manager’s first ever season without a winter break?