Five stats Guardiola's City MUST improve next season | OneFootball

After staying at the summit of the Premier League for so long, the 2024/25 season provided an unexpected reality check for Pep Guardiola's Manchester City side who ended a campaign empty-handed for the first time ever under the Spaniard.

It was a sobering season all-round for the Cityzens, who finished third in the Premier League behind champions Liverpool and runners-up Arsenal, as their unprecedented streak of four Premier League titles in a row ground to an abrupt halt.

Dumped out of the Champions League by Real Madrid in the newly-formatted play-off stage, City's last remaining hope of silverware went up in flames at Wembley last month when they were beaten 1-0 by Crystal Palace in the FA Cup final.

City's standards dropped considerably and they will be looking to bounce back with some positive displays at the revamped Club World Cup, in which they face Wydad Casablanca today (17:00 kick off).

An active January transfer window steadied the ship at the Etihad, and three new faces have already strengthened City's ranks this summer: Tijjani Reijnders (from Milan), Rayan Ait-Nouri (from Wolves) and talented French playmaker Rayan Cherki from Lyon.

It seems unlikely that City will endure another horror season, but there were clear drop-offs last term that need to be addressed if the 2022/23 Champions League winners are to reassert themselves at home and abroad.

FIVE stats City must improve!

Counter culture: Guardiola's City are renowned for their possession game high up the pitch - yet the stats suggest they have lost the capacity to counter-attack effectively. One of the most prolific teams on the break in the Premier League in 2022/23, City's goal tally on the counter has since slumped and last season they notched only three counter-attack goals all season - only Brighton and Leicester (two apiece) netting fewer. Further, City could not muster a single strike on the break in the Champions League last term. Remastering the art of the sucker punch would appear to be a priority.

Away day blues: Perhaps surprisingly, City (43) finished last season with more Premier League goals at home than any other team and their form at the Etihad remained strong despite defeats against Spurs, Man Utd and Liverpool. On the road was another matter, however, as City lost six games and scored 16 fewer away goals than they managed in 2023/24. Titles are unlikely to come your way if you lose more games on your travels than Crystal Palace, and City need to rethink their away day strategies if they are to regain their mojo next season.

Rediscover resilience: The unprecedented slump that saw City fail to win in seven consecutive games across all competitions at the end of last year revealed the true extent of the Cityzens' vulnerabilities. Previously never beaten in more than three consecutive games in his career, Guardiola suffered the ignominy of losing five straight matches (versus Spurs, Bournemouth, Sporting, Brighton and Spurs again) and their four-game losing stretch in the Premier League last term around the same time was one of the worst in the division last season. City need to prevent defeats snowballing in the same manner next term.

Think beyond Haaland: For the first time since Guardiola's first campaign in English football, City only had a single player reach double figures for Premier League goals last season. Erling Haaland (22 goals in 2024/25) is no doubt a goal-scoring phenomenon, but Guardiola must know that his side cannot rely solely on the Norwegian. Last season, City's 'Next Best' scorers in the top flight were Omar Marmoush and Phil Foden (7 goals each) and the Cityzens' supporting cast need to really step up in this regard next season.

Press with purpose: PPDA (Passes per Defensive Action) is a metric that gauges pressing intensity - the lower the number, the more aggressively a team presses (check out Playmaker's summary of PPDA in the linked article here)...and City have fallen from grace in this particular area. Once renowned for the ferocity of their press high up the pitch, Guardiola's side languished in the lower half of the Premier League table in this statistic last term with the likes of Andoni Iraola's Bournemouth and Mikel Arteta's Arsenal showing the Cityzens how it should be done. To use the PPDA-leading numbers clocked up by the Cherries by way of comparison, Bournemouth on average allowed their opponents 9.9 passes in the 60% of the pitch closest to their goal, while City allowed their adversaries 12.4 passes. This drop-off in PPDA reflected a significant regression in the intensity of City's play last season.