By Tony Attwood
Go back to the early days of this decade, and you would be excused for saying that, unlike other clubs, Manchester City didn’t have “dips.”
Now, if you are a regular reader here, you may well have noticed my fascination with “dips” in the Premier League – the notion that even Premier League clubs that are doing consistently well tend to have times when they lose and draw a whole series of games that they would normally be expected to win. In short for clubs doing well, defeats and draws come in clusters.
We noticed it first with Arsenal, of course, and since then have, in passing, foud the same phenomena happening with other clubs. And indeed, this season, the success that Arsenal has had, has to a large degree been aided by the lack of such dips. In short, when a draw or defeat has come along, it is no longer inevitably followed by another poor result. And of late we have noted that this is a phenomenon that can affect all clubs.
Indeed, if we go right back to the early part of the decade, we can see that the nearest thing ManC had to a dip came in May 2021, where the results ran defeat, win, defeat, win, defeat. In 2022/3 there were two occasions when they got consecutive defeats. The following season was much the same.
But look at 2023/4 and something starts to change. In September / October, there were three defeats in four consecutive games – and yes here, as elsewhere, I am including results in all the major competitions: League, FA Cup, League Cup and Champions League. But I do this because to my mind, it is the impact of a defeat on a club, irrespective of the competition, that can affect the next match.
Then, in 2024/25 it was almost as if the ManCs had actually looked at what other clubs were doing and decided to copy! From the last game in October onward, they had 13 consecutive games in all competitions, of which nine were defeats, three were draws and just one was a win (that being against Nottingham Forest).
Now City were obviously very aware of this issue – it was hardly possible not to be – and they worked to overcome it, but we can still see the remnants of the situation in the 2025/6 results for the club, for at the start of the season their form showed a fairly minor issue in which in five games they won two, drew one and lost two. Not catastrophic, of course, but not really the ManC of old. But still, they did come out of the pattern fairly quickly
Then there were consecutive defeats at the end of November – only two, but even so, again not what we used to see.
Next, there were three consecutive league draws at the start of this year, and in fact if we look at the first seven games at the start of the year, the club had two wins, three draws and three defeats. Yet again, they came out of it – only to find themselves afflicted once again in more recent weeks.
For in March, the club has played five games: two in the League, two in the Champions League and one in the FA Cup. The results of these five games spread over 14 days have been one victory, two draws and two defeats.
On 4 March there was a home draw with Nottingham Forest, on 7 March an away win to Newcastle in the Cup, on 11 March an away defeat to Real Madrid, then an away draw with West Ham United, and on 17 March a home defeat to Real Madrid.
Now obviously, all runs come to an end at some time, and clubs can rebound from a poor set of results. Plus of course, ManC have had the problem of facing Real Mad twice, which is tough for any team to get through.
So, it can be argued that Arsenal have had easier games of late – although the contrary point can also be made that a club can only beat the teams it is drawn against. But the fact is that starting on 28 January, when Arsenal played Kairat Almaty in the Champions League, Arsenal have played 14 games across the Champions League, the Premier League, the League Cup and the FA Cup and have won 11, drawn three and lost none. The draws were again Brentford, Wolverhampton and Leverkusen, and indeed one could argue that the run from 12 February to 18 February was Arsenal’s dip, in that they had their two league draws with Brentford and Wolverhampton either side of an FA Cup victory.
Of course, this doesn’t guarantee Arsenal a victory in the League Cup final, but we have been looking at how clubs tend to suffer their poor results in chunks within a season, rather than having them evenly spread, and that does appear to be a recurring pattern. So it might just help us on this occasion, as Manchester City are in a dip, and Arsenal are on a 14-match unbeaten run. All runs come to an end sometime, but Arsenal’s position both mentally and in terms of results, is better than ManC’s at the moment.
