MCI-2016-17-To-2017-18

What Changed at Manchester City From 2016-17 to 2017-18

Manchester City ( MCI ) in 2016-17: 3rd in the table, 78 points, 80 goals scored, 39 conceded.

MCI in 2017-18: 1st in the table, 100 points, 106 goals scored, 27 conceded.

With largely the same set of players, in the same league, with the same manager, and similarly unlimited financial resources, they went from having a good season in 2016-17 to arguably having the greatest season the English Premier League has seen in 2017-18. Their 2017-18 season broke the record for the highest points ever in a season, and the most goals ever scored.

In this series, I explore some data to see what changed.

I intend to keep playing around and looking for interesting things and don’t really have a plan to this. What you’re seeing is most likely WIP. Some day in the future hopefully all loose ends will be tied up and the presentation and organisation will be easy on the eye.

To begin with I’m going to keep things simple and extricate and present things in a manner easily understandable to everyone. No expected goals based jumping to conclusions for now.

To note

• This is not to be confused as an analyis of how Man City play football, although some observations may arise along those lines. This focuses more on the difference between how they played in the two seasons.
• Be wary of assuming causation.
• Most of the charts and information is structured in a way to let us compare 2016-17 vs. 2017-18.

Posts

If you’re seeing this as a README on github.com, the post links are likely going to fail. The content is available in a website-esque format here.

Formations

Passing

I’m still working on how to organise this so for now this is going to remain in parts.

• Part 1 Looks at successful passes in more detail
• Part 2: Looks at unsuccessful passes in more detail
• Part 3: Looks at passes based on their lengths and angles

Assists

Shooting

Plays

• Part 1