Look, we'll probably never know whether there's anything dodgy happening but I'm just always suspicious when a team suddenly start looking superhuman. I was suspicious when we were untouchable back in 2003 and there were lots of rumours about blood spinning, I was suspicious when Barca and Spain suddenly became unbeatable and Fuertes and his blood bags got covered up in court, and I'm starting to get a little suspicious about a City team that don't seem to lose at all. Maybe they've just had a great start and in the second half of the season they'll start looking more like a normal title winning team. What I don't buy into though is the idea that a team can suddenly be significantly physically better than their rivals. Tactically and skill wise if they've bought a great new manager or players sure, but physically? Nah, not in a world of high end sports science with billions of pounds at stake.
But we are not looking physically better than our rivals. This is a Caf myth. We simply have more energy because we have so much ball. I've said this before but I'll say it again.
The average game the ball is in play for 54 minutes. City have an average possesion of 66%. That means we have the ball for 36 minutes and we have to defend for 18 minutes total in 115 minutes (including half time).
We probably spend more time in the locker room at half time than defending per match.
Example A is last season we topped the league (or at least were 2nd) for distance covered per game). We are now some comfortable on the ball that we are 8th in the league.
Example B is at Old Trafford this season we had 75% of the ball in the first half. So lets break it up. The ball spends an average of 27 minutes in play. United had the ball for about 6.5 minutes in that half. (3 of those in the last 5 minutes).
Second half was almost 55-45 and in the end we slowed the game down and abandoned the press, sat back and played on the counter.
So in reality we only have to put on our high press, high intensity for about 6 or 7 minutes per half with a 20 minute break in between. The difference for us this season is we are much better on the ball and don't have to press as much as opposed to last season where we gave away silly ball a lot of the time. Having so much patience on the ball is why we have so much intensity off it.
We also have no one in the top 10 number of sprints this season (in the league but I believe KDB is close and tops the CL in distance covered).