Four shots! Manchester City took four shots in Sunday's 1-0 loss to Arsenal. It was the club's smallest number of attempts in the entire 425-match Pep Guardiola era. Granted, they generated 0.5 xG from those four, compared to the 0.4 Arsenal generated from 12 shots, and they lost only because of a goal vigorously deflected off of defender Nathan Aké's face. But it was still a dire total, and there were two more shots from defenders (Ake and Josko Gvardiol each had one) than from Erling Haaland (zero).
It was also City's second loss in a row in league play and third in four matches overall. They hadn't dropped two straight in the Premier League since a Crystal Palace-Leicester City double in 2018. The losses have dropped City to third place in the Premier League, behind both Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur.
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Meanwhile, Bayer Leverkusen and VfB Stuttgart are leading Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga. Girona is second in LaLiga, ahead of both Atletico Madrid and Barcelona. Defending Serie A champ Napoli is fifth in Italy, already six points behind AC Milan and trailing Fiorentina to boot. And in France, PSG has had to rally just to get to third place with the same number of points as Brest and fewer than both Monaco and Nice.
What on earth is going on here? Are the meek inheriting soccer's earth? Has everyone caught up to the possession-dominant style almost all of the sport's financial heavyweights have deployed for the last decade?
Or is it just early? Yeah, it's probably just early.
We're approaching the quarter pole of the long 2023-24 season in European soccer, and while there are plenty of intriguing trends and oddities, the results haven't strayed too far from the norm. Manchester City is just two points behind Arsenal -- they trailed the Gunners by eight in mid-January last season and still comfortably reeled them in -- and Bayern is actually well ahead of where they were at this point last season. I cannot confirm that we won't end up seeing an uprising from the aforementioned meek, but it's not something we can confidently predict.
Below are some things we can confirm. Every season has its own unique flavor profile even if most of the champs remain the same, and here's what's been making 2023-24 interesting.
Scoring is up
Within Europe's Big Five leagues, teams have gone from scoring 1.38 goals per match in 2022-23 to 1.48 thus far in 2023-24, a 7.2% increase. A slight uptick in penalties has played a role in that, but even if you filter them out, you're still looking at a 6.3% increase in non-penalty goals (from 1.26 to 1.34).