The Table Doesn’t Lie: Manchester City are unstoppable

Manchester City might be the best team in Premier League history, and Southampton have serious problems in attack.

20. Crystal Palace (preseason prediction: 11th, difference: -9)
19. Swansea (17th, -2)
18. West Ham (10th, -8)
17. West Brom (12th, -5)
16. Everton (7th, -9)
15. Stoke (16th, +1)
14. Southampton (9th, -5)
13. Bournemouth (8th, -5)
12. Leicester (15th, +3)
11. Newcastle (14th, +3)

The bottom third of the Premier League is a scary place. You can’t swing a Slaven Bilic without hitting some explosive combination of dysfunction and mismanagement. And then there’s the more interesting case of Southampton. The table is still taking shape, and they should steer well clear of the relegation scrap, but the Saints have real problems. Or at least the Saints have one real problem: their attack doesn’t work. They have the seventh best defense in the league, but have scored only nine times, tied with West Brom for the fourth worst mark in the division.

Some of that, no doubt, is down to bad luck. Per Understat’s xG model, Southampton have scored about five fewer goals than they might reasonably have expected based on the quality of their chances. Only Crystal Palace have fallen further short of their xG total for the season. Still, the attack has been poor: in their 12 matches, the Saints have been held to an xG below one six times, and their three best attacking performances have come against 17th-place West Brom, 18th-place West Ham and 19th-place Swansea.

The only players to get on the score sheet more than once for the Saints this term are Manolo Gabbiadini and Steven Davis, and Sofiane Boufal, Dusan Tadic, Maya Yoshida and Charlie Austin are the only other players to get on the score sheet at all. Nathan Redmond has taken 10 more shots than any of his teammates and has yet to find the back of the net. Shane Long hasn’t scored a goal, in any competition, since February. In total, the six attacking players that have appeared in a Premier League match for the Saints this year have combined for six goals in 12 games.

This continues a downward trend that began last season, when the Saints scored roughly nine fewer goals than their xG total suggests they should have. The drop off in attack since 2015-16, the last time the club outperformed its xG total, has been alarming, but it makes sense considering the club lost its two best attackers, Sadio Mane and Graziano Pelle, and their manager, Ronald Koeman, that summer. In fact, in the larger context of Southampton’s relationship to the transfer market, their recent decline should hardly come as a surprise.

Consider: since returning to the top flight in 2012-13, the Saints have been forced to part ways with Mane, Pelle, Victor Wanyama, Jose Fonte, Adam Lallana, Ricky Lambert, Nathaniel Clyne, Dejan Lovren, Luke Shaw, Morgan Schneiderlin, Callum Chambers and Toby Alderweireld, all to wealthier clubs. They’ve also lost Mauricio Pochettino and Ronald Koeman. Mauricio Pellegrino, who replaced Claude Puel in the summer, is their fifth manager in the past six seasons. The fact they’ve taken this long to show signs of significant regression is a minor victory in itself.

The Saints’ ability to withstand the loss of their managers and best players depends on the quality of their academy, their shrewd business in the transfer market and their effectiveness in implementing a tactical identity designed specifically to survive the departure of any specific individuals. But when the quality of your team is so closely related to your ability to find cheap talent in the transfer market every summer, one bad, or even mediocre, window can have a big effect on, say, your ability to score literally any goals at all.

Southampton’s last two summers have hardly been disastrous, but Redmond, Gabbiadini (who arrived in January) and Boufal haven’t been able to replicate the production of Mane and Pelle. Add to that Long’s inability to score and Tadic’s struggles without a prolific target up front, and it’s hard to imagine an attacking revival is in the club’s future. Pellegrino has been in charge for less than six months, so perhaps he simply needs more time, but nothing he’s done so far suggests this is a problem he’s equipped to solve.

That’s a shame, really, because unlike most of the teams around them, Southampton have good excuses for their shortcomings on the pitch. The defense and defensive midfield remain more than strong enough to keep them firmly in mid-table, but in a time when even faintest whiff of organizational adequacy should be enough to challenge for a Europa League berth (*cough* Burnley *cough*), the Saints have become victims of their own competence.

10. Huddersfield (18th, +10)
9. Brighton (20th, +11)
8. Watford (13th, +5)
7. Burnley (19th, +12)
6. Arsenal (6th, –)
5. Liverpool (3rd, -2)
4. Tottenham (4th, –)
3. Chelsea (5th, +2)
2. Manchester United (2nd, –)
1. Manchester City (1st, –)

It is customary, in times such as these, to convince ourselves we might still be lucky enough to enjoy a title race — Manchester United are a different team with Paul Pogba fit, Chelsea are getting back to something approaching their form of last season, Tottenham might be the most balanced side in the division, Liverpool seem to be putting their defensive struggles behind them, something about Arsenal — but does anyone really think Manchester City can be caught?

The Citizens have dropped only two points in 12 matches, the best start ever to a Premier League season. They’ve scored 40 goals, more than three a match. They’ve conceded only seven, the second-best mark in the league. They’re on pace to shatter the Premier League record for both points and goals. They’re better than everyone else, certainly this season, and possibly in Premier League history.

City’s improvement between this year and last — when they frequently played the best soccer in the league, only to be undermined by a bad defense and their capacity for unraveling under pressure — has been remarkable. Kyle Walker and

Benjamin Mendy

Fabian Delph (!) have solidified the defense, Ederson saves more than zero percent of the limited number of shots directed at his goal and the attack is comprised of five of the best 10 attackers in the league, with a sixth to come off the bench.

City’s 2-0 win against Leicester was perfectly underwhelming in the context of their season so far — after all, they’ve scored five against Liverpool and Crystal Palace, six against Watford, seven against Stoke — and so it’s worth emphasizing how thoroughly they dismantled a good, motivated Leicester team away from home. Perhaps the match would have gone differently if Vincent Kompany hadn’t brought down Jamie Vardy in the opening minutes, or had been sent off. But he did, he wasn’t and City were, predictably, rampant.

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They didn’t even play particularly well. The first half hour was full of misplaced passes — Leicester deserve some credit for this, but much of it was merely sloppy — Leroy Sane could have had two assists in that time if not for some uncharacteristically poor touches on the left wing, Pep Guardiola can’t have been pleased to see Delph left isolated against Riyad Mahrez more than once, even if the

midfielder

left-back held up well and every City fan in a 4000 mile radius audibly gasped when Eliaquim Mangala replaced John Stones, who will now miss six weeks with a hamstring injury.

But City at 75 percent are better than almost every other team in the league at 100. That realization, more than any of the breathtaking attacking play, was what so impressive about the performance. This isn’t what most people think of when they hear the phrase “winning while playing badly,” but this City side is much better than what most people think of when they hear the word “good.” It was fitting, too, this latest win came at a stadium City lost at last season, 4-2, in a match that was taken as evidence of Guardiola’s naiveté in regards to the English game.

City, playing a high defensive line, were ripped apart by Leicester’s counter-attack. Their fans might have had some disturbing flashbacks when Vardy almost did exactly the same thing in the opening minutes on Saturday. But this is a different team. A better team. And while United have Pogba back while and Eden Hazard is back to his best and while Harry Kane might be the best number 9 in the country and while Mohamed Salah is the league’s top scorer and while something about Arsenal, there’s no catching City.