Reducing quality of goalscoring chances is the key to stopping Manchester City

After beating Chelsea 1-0 on January 15 to claim a 12th successive Premier League win, Manchester City moved 14 points clear of Liverpool, who had two games in hand.

The Citizens have dropped points in three of their subsequent seven games, and their gap at the top has been eroded to a solitary point. With their huge showdown against the Merseysiders just around the corner, have Pep Guardiola's men been showing the first signs of cracking under pressure or have they just been a touch unlucky?

A bit of perspective is always useful. Following the win over Chelsea, City were on course for a 97-point haul, getting back to the record-breaking levels they set in 2017-18 and 2018-19 when they posted back-to-back totals of 100 and 98 points.

Despite their recent setbacks they are still on track to finish the season with 92 points, having won the title last term with 86. They have slipped from borderline history-making pace to merely outstanding.

Streaks such as City's 12-game winning run can get taken for granted as they make them look routine and Liverpool, currently on a nine-game winning sequence of their own, deserve great credit for being able to give neutrals any kind of title race at all.

City have dropped points in seven of their 29 league games this season and, interestingly, three opponents – Tottenham, Southampton and Crystal Palace – have all denied them twice. Liverpool, who drew 2-2 with the Citizens at Anfield in October, will hope to add their name to that list at the Etihad Stadium next week.

Are there any lessons to be learnt from the matches City have failed to win?

In their most recent slip-ups, Guardiola's side managed 20 shots against Spurs and Southampton and 18 against Palace – well in line with their season average of 18.2 shots per game – so they still created chances in their usual quantity.

Tottenham, who won 3-2 at the Etihad, and Southampton, who drew 1-1 with City at St Mary's, were particularly successful in preventing the champions from having many clear sights at goal and restricting the quality of those attempts.

On average for City this season a shot has been worth 0.12 expected goals. In January's clash with the Saints that figure was 0.08 and against Spurs it was 0.07 – their joint-second-lowest value of the season.

Those opponents frustrated City in contrasting manners. The Saints played with two forwards, pressing and contesting higher up the pitch more often than most teams dare to do against City.

Southampton also drew 0-0 away to City in September and their approach of not retreating into their shell meant that only 56 per cent of the Citizens' shots in the two games this season came from inside the penalty area.

That is a long way below City's seasonal average of 70 per cent and, to put Saints' achievement in context, they restricted Pep's men to similar levels to Norwich (53 per cent) and Wolves (59 per cent), the Premier League teams with the lowest proportion of shots in the box this term.

Tottenham, on the other hand, sat back and trusted the quality of Harry Kane and Heung-Min Son on the counter-attack.

Antonio Conte's side allowed their hosts 60 touches inside the Spurs penalty area – City's third-highest total of the season – but their well-marshalled back five always got bodies between the attackers and Hugo Lloris's goal.

Tottenham's ability to put pressure on City players as they shot limited the champions to one of their least efficient attacking performances of the campaign: 20 shots for just 1.3 non-penalty expected goals.

Although Spurs and Southampton executed their tactics about as well as they could have hoped, opponents still need a bit of luck against a side as talented as City. The Citizens struck the woodwork three times in their draw at St Mary's and once in the home defeat to Tottenham.

The leaders hit the frame of the goal twice more in their 0-0 draw against Crystal Palace just before the international break, meaning they have been denied by the woodwork nine times in their last seven games, having struck it just once in the seven games prior to that sequence. Those are the kinds of fine margins that can swing a title race.

Palace were less effective at limiting the quality of chances City created, and simulating the probability of each chance for each team 10,000 times shows that City did enough to win the match at Selhurst Park 80 per cent of the time, with the draw a 15 per cent chance.

The table below shows how City's underlying numbers and conversion rate in front of goal have cooled off slightly since the turn of the year.

Manchester City's Premier League stats before and after December 31, 2021

As well as the dropped points against Southampton, Spurs and Palace, City also recorded narrow wins over Arsenal, Chelsea and Everton, with the winning goals coming in the 93rd, 70th and 82nd minutes of those matches.

They ran particularly hot around Christmas, putting seven goals past Leeds, four past Newcastle and thrashing Leicester 6-3 on Boxing Day.

A drop-off from that kind of level was inevitable and their 2022 league schedule has already seen them tick off fixtures against top-six clubs Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and Manchester United.

The Citizens' recent stutter, along with Liverpool's relentless form in the league, has made things exciting in the title race but there is not yet reason for panic in the champions' camp.

They have an easier run-in than the Reds and will hope to get back on track against a Burnley side who have lost ten of their 11 league encounters with City since Guardiola's appointment in 2016.

Not got a bet365 account? Bet £10 & get £50 in free bets

Open account offer. Minimum deposit requirement. Free Bets are paid as bet credits and are available for use upon settlement of bets to value of qualifying deposit. Minimum odds, bet and payment method exclusions apply. Returns exclude bet credits stake. Time limits/T&Cs apply. 18+ begambleaware.org

MORE FREE BETS

Sign up to emails from Racing Post Sport and get all the latest news and tips

Today's top sports betting stories

Follow us on Twitter @racingpostsport