In a season where the goals are flying in at a rate never achieved in The Premier League before, it seems that Manchester City’s tight defence could be the difference between them winning the title and not.
It’s no surprise either; the back five of Manchester City boast England’s #1 the joint top most clean sheets in The Premier League and have conceded fewer goals than all of the other 19 Premier League teams. All of this is being achieved during the highest ever goals to game ratio in The Premier League, 2.97, and the highest in the top tier of English football since the 1967/68 season, 3.03, the last time Manchester City won the title.
However, you’d expect a challenge from the so-called Big Four of the past ten years wouldn’t you? Out of the 19 Premier League campaigns so far, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United have dominated the Winners and Runner Up spot; apart from the 94/95 season which Blackburn triumphed in, every campaign has been won by either Arsenal, Chelsea or 12-time winning United. Second place has always fallen to one of the Big Four bar the first two years of the league’s existence.
Yet it seems that the most recent winners, Manchester United and Chelsea, have a problem in keeping other teams out and it has played no small part in widening the gap between the Blue half of Manchester and, for once, the chasing Red half and Villas-Boas’ freely-attacking Chelsea.
When David de Gea joined Manchester United and had a questionable Premier League debut some were quick to suggest that Fergie had “A new season and an issue over his goalkeeper.” Take a bow Daily Mail, for how wrong you were. The Spaniard has arguably won points for United single-handedly, already; he is the only ‘keeper to have made over 8 saves in a match and kept a clean sheet in the PL and in the one of the two games he has done it in, he’s won United two points. Had he conceded, United would’ve drawn to Everton 1-1, the other week.
It was only 3 seasons ago that United were a team that shut you out, that you just couldn’t score against; in fact they went 1311 minutes without conceding and that’s 14-and-a-half games. Yet this season they’ve allowed oppositions more shots per game than any other team across the whole Premier League, even more than Wigan. de Gea has been forced into making a save every 19.5 minutes, more often than any other PL goalkeeper and therefore he’s made more saves than any other too; 79% of the shots he faces, he saves and that’s 8% higher than Spanish counterpart Pepe Reina.
As i support a team in the Championship i can view the Premiership without bias and personally its great to see City giving the other so called big sides a run for their money this season. It keeps the Premiership interesting and anything that upsets Ferguson is a good thing in my book! Apart from that City are an entertaining side to watch.