Team Focus: Manchester City's troubles on the road

Sometimes football is so wrapped in its own conventions that we take for granted things that actually defy explanation. It’s a given that the vast majority of teams will be better at home than away, and so it’s accepted that some teams will, for reasons that are never quite explained, suffer from what the cliché would have us term “travel sickness”. Yet what is that? How can it be that Manchester City can batter Norwich City 7-0 at home one week and the next week go to Sunderland, a team lower in the table than Norwich, and lose 1-0?

So let’s first look generally at what causes that difference between home and away form. Travel, and the logistics of staying away from home in unfamiliar surroundings, must make a difference, albeit less than it used to: one luxury hotel is much the same as another. A home crowd cheering you on must be more motivating than one that desperately wants the opposition to win. A recent study by Stefan Szymanski, in fact, showed that teams with a noted hooligan problem undergo a short-term improvement in results, presumably because away teams are intimidated.

Then there’s familiarity. Play on the same pitch every week and you’ll know instinctively where you are, where a team-mate or an opponent is, and how much power might be needed to land a pass in a particular spot. You’ll know the camber, how the grass behaves, have markers that enhance an awareness of where on the pitch you are.

And in City’s case, that perhaps is particularly significant. Mousa Dembélé pointed out last week that Tottenham find it harder to break teams down at home because the White Hart Lane pitch is so small. The Etihad has the largest pitch in the Premier League: perhaps they struggle to adapt to grounds where there is less space. The Stadium of Light has the eighth biggest pitch in the Premier League, but is fully four yards narrower than the Etihad. Given that it’s hardly a surprise if players used to smaller pitches find it hard to adjust to the Etihad and vice versa.

Still, the extent of the differential in home and away form is startling: at home City have won five out of five in the league, scoring 20 and conceding two. Away from home, they have taken four points from six games, scoring eight and conceding 10. Manuel Pellegrini, the City manager, has stressed all season that his side is being let down by individual errors away from home, and up to a point that’s true. Joe Hart was at fault for goals at Cardiff, Aston Villa and Chelsea, Javi García has never looked comfortable when playing at centre-back, and both James Milner and Martín Demichelis bore responsibility for Phil Bardsley’s goal for Sunderland on Sunday.

But what’s also significant is the drop-off in goals scored: this is a general malaise; it’s not simply down to a defence struggling whenever Vincent Kompany is injured (and perhaps missing Gareth Barry’s controlling influence). City had 24 shots on Sunday – to Sunderland’s 5 – but that gives a misleading impression of their dominance. It’s true they had 63% possession, but there was rarely a sense of them laying siege to the Sunderland goal.

The stats show few differences between home and away form. City actually have more possession away from home – 62.4% to 57.1%, and a better pass completion rate – 87.4% to 87.1%. They tackle less and intercept less, but then the opposition has less of the ball. They do concede 9.3 shots per game away as opposed to 8 at home, but the only major difference is in chance conversion.

The truth is that not all shots are equal. Away from home, City are averaging 17 shots per game as opposed to 17.8 at home; the big difference is in conversion rate: 22.5% at home to 7.8% away. That is evidence that they are not creating the same quality of chance. Álvaro Negredo in particular seems afflicted, although the sample size is small, scoring 25% of his chances at home and just 11.1% away. Is that confidence? Or is it an indication he is attempting more speculative shots from further out as City find it hard to penetrate away from the wide open spaces of home?

City aren’t far from being an extremely accomplished side. It would only take a slight improvement in that conversion rate – and the elimination of what are basic errors at the back – to lift their away form to a level commensurate with their home form. The danger now, though, is that those errors have eroded their confidence away from the Etihad, that the poor away form becomes self-perpetuating.