What does a win or draw against Manchester City tell us about teams?

Tottenham were the first team this season to take points off Manchester City. After drawing away to City they lost at home to Newcastle. Tottenham play at home to Pep Guardiola's side on Sunday.

Getting a draw or a win against City is a good result. It means that somehow or other you have done well. What will you do next?

Manchester United won at City in the EFL Cup on Wednesday. The last team to avoid defeat to them in the Premier League were Crystal Palace, who drew away. In their next game they lost at home to Southampton.

Promoted Norwich won at home to City. They were praised for their bravery in passing the ball out from the back when under pressure. (Against Liverpool and Chelsea they had been criticised for their foolishness in passing the ball out from the back when under pressure. They lost to Liverpool and Chelsea).

After Norwich had beaten City we were told they had got used to the Premier League. Their future was now rosy. They lost their next game. In fact they lost six of their next seven.

Only two of the eight teams who have taken points from City this season won their next game, and one of those was Liverpool.

City have dropped points more often this season than before. In each of the previous two seasons they dropped points in only six games. So were the consequences for the other team different then? Not really.

Last season two teams who picked up points against City dropped points in their next game to opponents who would be relegated. The season before three teams who took points off City lost in their next game to opponents who would be relegated. During the past two and a bit seasons a total of 20 teams have taken points off City. In the next games there were six wins, four draws and ten defeats.

When City draw or lose you will hear or read long analyses of what they did wrong, but also of what their opponents did right. These analyses might be accurate. Though a team can be praised on one day for doing something and criticised on another day for doing the same thing. If they win the first game and lose the second.

When a team get a good result you will sometimes be told they have turned a corner. They might have. But nobody knows what is round it.

Bill James is a well-known baseball analyst. He retired in October after 17 years working for the Boston Red Sox, with whom he won four World Series rings. Previously he had been a writer, starting in the 1970s with a self-published Baseball Abstract.

Before leaving the Red Sox, James did some research into good and bad games. Was a good game more likely than not to be followed by another? Was a bad game more likely than not to be followed by another?

James wrote: “I had this idea: suppose that we divide a hitter’s games evenly into ‘good’ games and ‘bad’ games, based on the hitter’s season. Let us suppose that the player plays 160 games; we rank the 160 games 1 to 160 in order of the number of runs that he has created in each game, and we divide those into his 80 best games and his 80 worst games.”

Then James put the games into date order. “With an equal number of good and bad games, a player should, if he has no real tendency to get hot or cold, have an equal number of times when the pattern goes good/good as when the pattern goes good/bad. If he does have a real tendency to get hot and cold, then he should have more games that go good/good than games that form a random pattern.”

James studied 68,309 pairs of performances. He found: “There are 34,683 cases within the data in which a player followed a good game with a good game or a bad game with a bad game, and 33,626 cases in which the two games did not match – 50.8 per cent matches, 49.2 per cent non-matches.”

In other words, there was little if any correspondence between the level of performance in one game and the next. Of course, good and bad performances were different for some players than for others.

Red Sox owner John Henry also owns Liverpool. Nowadays Liverpool drop points even less frequently than City. Even so, only two of the last five opponents to take points off Liverpool won their next game, and both times the points-takers were Manchester United.

When Tony Pulis managed Middlesbrough he said: “People get too carried away when you win and too carried away when you lose.” We do. We tend to overreact to what has just happened. Psychologists call this recency bias. My research into football suggests that the result of one game on its own tells us effectively nothing about the result of the next game.

How to show love for the FA Cup

The FA Cup would be more romantic without replays. There would be more upsets. Surely only people who count pennies rather than fluttering hearts could object?

I have made this argument before. Gary Lineker made it on Saturday, and rather more people listen to him.

Lineker said: “I don’t see the point of replays any more. It’s a bygone era. No other country in the world have them. If you have a draw after 90 minutes as a lower-league club then you almost have a 50-50 chance of getting through in a penalty shootout. Therefore it could be better for a lower-league club, because if you get a replay you might get a few quid but you might not get through, but penalties would give them the chance of getting the glory.” Perfectly put.

The less skilled of two teams are more likely to win a short contest than a long one. So if they are having a good day and drawing after 90 minutes it could become a great day if the tie went straight to extra-time then penalties. They are more likely to go through in that way than when starting all over again on another day.

Abolishing replays altogether would be true to the spirit of the FA Cup.

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