The real reason Manchester City was bad last season

Not that I am a fan of City, but to me, the relatively poor performance of the club throughout the entire previous season was a surprise. I may have found the true reason for it. And since we are entering the last month of this summer’s transfer window, it might be something that teams want to take into account when buying players.

You see, there were simply too many babies in the team. And by babies, I mean actual babies. Two players who significantly underperformed last season in the City team were Jack Grealish and Erling Haaland. Long-time readers may remember that I consider Jack Grealish one of the most overrated players in the game, and his season was so poor that there are plenty of rumours about where he could move to. Meanwhile, Erling Haaland, who I think is one of the best strikers in the world, possibly the best, had a decidedly poor season for his standards.

What do these guys have in common? They both became fathers for the first time in late 2024; Grealish in October and Haaland in December.

Now, whenever I hear of someone becoming a father for the first time, I have to think of something a friend of mine told me. The first day back in the office, his boss greeted him with the eternal wisdom: “So, you are now also coming to the office to get some sleep.”

Becoming a father creates a lot of stress. As a result, many people will take their eyes off the ball (sorry, but not sorry for the pun), as priorities shift. When it comes to footballers, a new study by David and Robert Butler has shown that elite footballers experience a deterioration in their performance after becoming fathers for the first time.

The chart below shows that expected assists deteriorate as the birth of the child approaches. When hearing the news about their partner being pregnant, their performance remains stable. However, about one to two months before birth, the number of expected assists starts to decline significantly, to the point where the effect becomes statistically significant. Once they had the baby, expected assists of new fathers dropped by almost one-third compared to nine months earlier. A team like City could normally digest the decline for one of its star players, but two core team members having a baby at the same time proved too much.

Decline in expected assists in the months before and after becoming a father for the first time

Source: Butler and Butler (2024)

This decline in performance may be due to the shrinkage of the left hippocampus after birth – not in the baby’s but the father’s brain. There have been plenty of studies of newly minted fathers, and one of the common findings is that testosterone levels drop for new fathers. Recently, a study found that the more testosterone levels drop, the more the left hippocampus shrinks in the brains of fathers.

Becoming a parent literally shrinks the brain. Unfortunately, the left hippocampus is the area in the brain that is most involved in storing and retrieving verbal and narrative memories, like – I don’t know – the game plan the coach gave the team before the match, or the coordinated moves learned during practice sessions.

Decline in left hippocampus correlates with decline in testosterone after becoming a father

Source: Saxbe et al. (2023)

There you have it. The real reason why City was so bad last year. And now let’s discuss why Manchester United ended up in 15^th position last season…