A narrative we have seen much of this season is how City are faring (unfavourably so) with last season; that their early season struggles are reflecting poorly in comparison to the dynamic way they began the 2011/12 season.
We have seen comment with regards to the lack of goals scored this season and prior to yesterday's game at Wigan I also read that City were six points down on the corresponding point a year ago. Shuddertothink provided some much needed context in this post after ten games of the season and I thought it worth sharing the following graphic that shows how City are faring this season based on the corresponding fixtures from 2011/12 - not a corresponding number of games:
The coefficient (known as ISG) has been put together by Simon Gleave (@SimonGleave on Twitter) over at Infostrada, and as we can see shows that City are in fact better placed by a total of three points (United are incidentally two points worse off)
The graphic also shows a predicted final table based on future results that match last seasons corresponding fixtures.
There are some notable other ; specifically how Chelsea have improved upon last season (no consolation for Roberto di Matteo) and a sizeable improvement for Stoke although the evidence suggests that the congratulations for West Brom could possibly be more muted than they have been?
The coefficient is also not kind to both Newcastle and Arsenal. Much is made of Newcastle's participation in the Europa League but the closer reality is that they (and Demba Ba of course) significantly overachieved last season, whilst Arsenal look in danger of being on the outside looking in when it comes to the Champions League positions.
Looking ahead with the predicted table, it does also indicate that we should very much expect the Manchester duopoly come the end of the season.
It's certainly an interesting look at how sides are performing and like all the numbers related posts I put up, something I'll revisit at various points of the season.