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Yesterday's defeat to Fulham was City's tenth home league defeat of the season. That means 2021/22 has now become the first season in which home Championship defeats have run into double figures since the club returned to the second tier in 2003/04.
The previous worst seasons in terms of home Championship defeats since City's return to this level were the difficult 2004/05 campaign (Black Friday, etc) and the Covid-affected 2020/21 season. The team suffered nine home league defeats in both of those campaigns.
The number of home Championship defeats for each season since 2003/04 are as follows:
2003/04 - 7
2004/05 - 9
2005/06 - 6
2006/07 - 5
2007/08 - 7
2008/09 - 4
2009/10 - 5
2010/11 - 4
2011/12 - 5
2012/13 - 2
2014/15 - 8
2015/16 - 2
2016/17 - 8
2017/18 - 3
2019/20 - 3
2020/21 - 9
2021/22 - 10 (with 6 to play)
When I was looking at the figures this morning, I was surprised to discover that City had suffered just two home league defeats during Russell Slade's only full season in charge (2015/16) - the joint-best record since the Bluebirds returned to this level 19 years ago.
We’ve been garbage all season. Of course there are negatives. If you don’t notice that and address them, you’ll never fix them.
Re Slade, very unfairly maligned. His career has nosedived since he left us but he sorted out the mess that Solskjaer left us in and kept the club competitive. And no, I wouldn’t have him back. He’s also instrumental in getting us back in blue so he’s alright by me.
Here are all the times we've lost 10 or more at home in a season in the league. Unsurprisingly we were relegated in every single one of them.
1984/85 13
1994/95 12
1933/34 11
1985/86 11
2018/19 11
1981/82 10
We're currently matching a couple of records. Our record of least number of home wins in a season stands at 5. 2 is the lowest number of clean sheets we've kept at home in a single campaign.
We've failed to score in 8 of our home games. The record stands at 11 from the 2004/05 season where, again, we were in a relegation battle. Our 18 goals at home so far would be a club record at the end of the season if we only added one to that tally. The record low is 20 home goals for a season. That was set in 2013/14. We managed just one more goal in our other Premier League season. We also only scored 21 home goals in 1979/80 yet won 11 and drew 4 of our 21 home games.
There have been only two seasons where we've won more games away than at home - last season and in 1986/87, while we've only lost more at home than away on 4 occasions, last season being top dog when we lost 4 fewer games away from the Cardiff City stadium.
An awful season, that would usually have seen us relegated, hopefully not this time.
In some ways seeing some of the younger lads come through has been great but I'm still far from convinced by many of them at this level. Bagan surprisingly looks the pick of the bunch at the moment, even without his goals he has looked far more confident since his return to the squad.
Fulham have been excellent this season but coming away from yet another home loss where we didn't really trouble their keeper, feeling like "welll it wasn't as bad as I feared" just shows where we are.
This summer will be huge.