Grading Manchester City this season

Now that the Premier League season has just ended, sportswriters everywhere are gearing up to write countless editorials attempting to “score” various players based on their performance. Whether it is from A-F or from 0-100, almost every player well be scored by a variety of journalists, pundits, and fans. They look at each player, come up with a score on how well the player did last season, and they compare them between players on the same team and players at the same position to when discussing transfer targets or player of the year awards.

Personally, I strongly dislike that type of assessment. Is association football not a complex game played between 22 players? Do tactics and teammates not effect a player’s performance? Not even the best scouting and talent evaluation departments in the world have mastered the art of assessing a player’s performance. So yeah, if I can actually somehow manage to create a system that allows me to assess a player’s performance to a reasonably accurate degree in a context neutral fashion, well, I would be paid big bucks at a top tier club.

So instead, with my end of season assessment, I have decided to focus on assessing Manchester City’s offense and defense as a whole. Yes, I am making an inaccurate assumption here that offensive and defensive performance is discrete (hence why there are separate scores for each) in the interest of simplifying things. I am also going to make my assessment completely result based, so I will be basing it on what happened instead of a hypothetical what could have happened or what I think will happen next season.

So let’s start with the offense. I am very satisfied with the offensive capabilities of the club as a whole, and there really isn’t a way for anyone to look at City’s offense this season and not be satisfied overall. Despite crippling injuries to a variety of important offensive players, Manchester City still scored 71 goals, good for top in the league. Tottenham, Leicester, and Arsenal are second, third and fourth respectively in goals scored, with 69, 68, and 65 goals.

Consistency wise, the club could have been slightly more consistent in the attack, as Manchester City failed to score in 7 games during the Premier League season. Unlike some truly great offenses like Barcenlona’s, City’s offensive output mostly relies on Aguero, who scored 24 of the 71 goals, approximately a third of all the goals City scored in the Premier League. However, this is only a very minor complaint as Vardy and Kane both scored a higher percentage of their respective teams’ total goals.

Creatively, Manchester City is very solid. The team is very capable of fast, lethal attacks. They are third in the league in shots per game, with 16.2, and with a shot accuracy of 48%, it’s not like they are just blasting away without posing much of an actual threat. Assists wise, City tallied a total of 53 assists, tied for first in the league with Arsenal. Silva let the club in assists with 11, but it is important to note that other offensive players like De Bruyne and Navas also notched up quite a few assists, so Arsenal with Ozil, City has options if one player goes out of form or gets injured.

Offensively, I am very happy with Manchester City’s offense, and I would easily score them an A. City’s offense scored the most goals in the league, meaning that well, they performed the best out of the 20 offenses in the Premier League. After all, if the goal of an offense is to score goals, City’s scored the most, hence they performed the best last season.

Defensively however, the situation isn’t as rosy. Man City conceded 41 goals, tied with Southampton for 5^th place. Ignoring Manchester United, who still have a game to play, Tottenham had the best defence in the league, conceding only 35 goals, 6 better than City.

Manchester City isn’t conceding as many shots as other teams, they actually conceded the least amount of shots per game with only 8.9. However, the problem is that City’s defence concedes a large amount of quality shots. We would often see City’s poorly positioned and slow defenders get drawn out of position and give the opposition great scoring opportunities.

Overall, I’d give the City defence a B-, hey, if they’re fifth in goals conceded, they’re still top 25 percentile, 75% of the clubs in the prem are worse. But let’s be honest here, with the amount of money Manchester City have spent, and with their expectations, they need to do better than 5^th.

This season, City’s defence really let them down, but the offense is more than satisfactory. Perhaps if Pep Guardiola brings in a better defensive system and maybe some better defenders, combined with the existing amazing attack, I can easily see this club challenging for the title next season.