Why Manchester City’s run-in provides historically ‘easy pickings’ at home

By Brian Sears

1 April 2011

Manchester City have four more home games in their season – visits from Sunderland (on Sunday) and then Tottenham, West Ham and Stoke. Last season City claimed 40 home points, their best ever home haul in 13 Premier League seasons. To match that they require nine points from those last four games.

Three of the clubs still to visit Eastlands are in City’s “favourite six” of current Premier League clubs when it comes to gathering home points at this level: Sunderland, West Ham and Stoke. Indeed in games against Sunderland (six of them) and Stoke (two) City have yet to drop a single point at home in the Premier League, while against West Ham they’ve won 23 of 30 points from 10 meetings, or almost 77 per cent.

But Tottenham are the club of all the current clubs against whom they have had most difficulty in gaining home points. In 13 home games with Spurs so far, City have won two, drawn two – and lost nine. That means they’ve only won a fifth of the points possible on their own turf against Spurs.

Below are the City home records, club-by-club, in the Premier League.

The related article linked here predicts this season’s final table based on historic head-to-head records.