Remember when it seemed like Manchester City might be done? No? Well, OK. A lot's happened since then. I get it. But let's refresh your memory.
This was back, 75 years ago, in late November of 2020. Jose Mourinho was managing Tottenham. (Remember that? Me neither.) Spurs went into the Etihad and won 2-0 thanks to a handful of devastating counter-attacks that City seemed completely incapable of containing. It evoked memories of the ancient times of 2016, Pep Guardiola's first season in Manchester, when the likes of Aleksandar Kolarov, Gael Clichy and Bacary Sagna were scrambling around and failing to understand the basics of juego de posicion.
Following the loss to Spurs, City had played eight matches, won three, drawn three and lost two. They were in 13th place, one spot above Newcastle and one behind Arsenal. Worse still, they'd conceded 11 goals and scored only 10.
Now, soccer is a random, low-scoring game that only occasionally rewards teams for playing well, but even nerds like me were concerned by City's first eight matches of the 2020-21 season. Guardiola had established his new team as Barcelona or Bayern Munich East, a dominant machine that would lose out on domestic titles only if someone else went on an unsustainable hot streak. In each of Guardiola's first four seasons, City led the league in expected goal differential. The two teams that took the title from them, Chelsea in 2016-17 and Liverpool in 2019-20, dropped off significantly the following year respectively, and both needed north of 90 points to win the thing in the first place. However, this didn't seem like just a rotten stretch of luck for City. As of Nov. 25, four teams had posted better xG differentials, and Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham had all doubled up City's number. This was a real decline, over a real sample of matches.
Of course, City didn't lose another game until mid-March, taking 54 of a possible 57 points from their next 19 matches. They won the league title in 2020-21 by 12 points with a plus-51 goals differential; no one else was north of plus-29. And yes, they also finished the year with the best xG differential, too.
So, maybe this would be the year they'd finally lose their grip? They'd have two of the three previous European champions to contend with, plus the team that had finished second the year before. And for most of this season, City were second-best somewhere: points, goal differential, xG differential. That is, until the last three matches: 17 goals for, and three against.
Halfway through their season, no one's scored more goals than City, and no one's conceded fewer. And despite Liverpool looking as good as they ever have under Jurgen Klopp, and Chelsea adding Romelu Lukaku to a team that won the Champions League last season, those two have a combined league-title probability of only 22%, according to FiveThirtyEight.
The league, once again, is Manchester City's to lose. And while the story is the same, the Premier League's protagonist has figured out how to change -- for the second year in a row.