As Manchester City summed up their season by losing to Norwich on the final day of the 2012-13 Premier League, fans around the Etihad continued to display banners and sing songs to their recently departed manager Roberto Mancini. It was hardly surprising that they did so. With City having previously gone 35 years without silverware, Mancini walked into the manager’s office at the City of Manchester Stadium and procured not only the 2011 F.A. Cup but also the 2011-12 Premier League trophy the following season. They were (and are) successes that, for fans of a club so overshadowed by their local rivals, meant the world.

Those successes were not enough to prevent Mancini’s departure at the end of a poor 2012-13 season, which saw Manchester City knocked out of the Champions League at the group stage without a win, defeated by Wigan Athletic in the F.A. Cup Final and 11-point runners-up to Manchester United in the final Premier League table. As was proved by Abramovich’s sacking of Carlo Ancelotti in 2011, triumphs at the top level are quickly forgotten. In the age of the mega club, only continued success is enough to provide job security for a manager.

It is into this environment that new Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini is entering. The former Villarreal boss is now coaching a club that seeks to join the likes of Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Manchester United as one of the world’s best – an admirable ambition for a club that played second-division football as recently as 2002. And it is here that he must leave Mancini’s mistakes behind if that ambition is to be achieved.

First and foremost on Pellegrini’s agenda must be to keep in mind at all times that the relationship between players and manager will have an effect on performance and form. Mancini’s frequent public criticism of his own players may have been either attempted psychology or simply frustration, but either way his tactics of calling out players such as Joe Hart, Vincent Kompany and Samir Nasri (regardless of how much the latter of these may have deserved it) in public had a definitively negative impact on the City squad. Post-match media interviews are not the place for such discussions – they belong, as Sir Alex Ferguson exemplified, in the dressing room, well out of reach of cameras and microphones. At the same time, however, he must also find balance and assert himself as the boss. If anyone looks and acts the part, it is Pellegrini. It is a delicate yet crucial equilibrium to discover if City are to return to the top of the pile.

The next battle Pellegrini must win will be ongoing – signing the right players. It cannot be said that Mancini failed entirely at this task. David Silva, Yaya Toure, Mario Balotelli, James Milner, Edin Dzeko, Gael Clichy and Sergio Aguero all arrived during the Italian’s tenure at the Etihad, and all played significant parts in winning the Premier League trophy. In his final year, however, a flurry of last-minute signings yielded only one consistent performer; Matija Nastasic. Javi Garcia was an inadequate replacement for the departed Nigel De Jong, Scott Sinclair spent most of the season on the bench due to Mancini’s reluctance to play wingers and Maicon was well past his use-by date. Jack Rodwell initially looked a failure but injury covered up his potential to be a top player, and he showed flashes of brilliance when he did play, so a final verdict on the former Evertonian is yet to be handed down.

What role Pellegrini has played in this season’s signings is unclear thanks to the growing influence of Soriano and Begiristain on Manchester City, but no matter who is directly responsible, it seems to be an earlier and more measured approach to the transfer window. It is difficult to see any of Alvaro Negredo, Jesus Navas, Fernandinho or Stevan Jovetic being a complete failure – all four are quality players. While Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester United have all been making plenty of noise about Luis Suarez, Gareth Bale, Wayne Rooney and Cesc Fabregas respectively, City – despite spending more money than any other club in the Premier League this season by a considerable margin – have slipped under the radar and seem happy to have made their purchases early, which should allow all four time to bed in with their new manager, teammates and country. This kind of transfer activity – getting quality players in early on in the window – should continue under Pellegrini’s reign.

Dubbed ‘The Engineer,’ Pellegrini is a man who likes to construct a balanced and efficient team and his tactics will play a key role in City’s success. At both Villarreal and Malaga, he favored the implementation of a 4-2-2-2 system with attacking full backs, two central defensive mids and attacking midfielders who can move from the wing to the centre. Whether he will bring the same formation to City is unsure but what he will do is play with a solid back four – Mancini’s experimental 3-5-2 is unlikely to ever see the light of day under Pellegrini. Hart, Zabaleta, Nastasic, Kompany and Clichy will suit Pellegrini’s system perfectly in the back.

If he does elect to stick with what he knows, Toure is likely to be joined by one of Fernandinho or Milner as central defensive midfielders. Silva, Navas and Nasri will take up the attacking midfield options and a rotating forward line of Dzeko, Aguero, Negredo and Jovetic should provide plenty of goals. The other option favoured by Begiristain is a Barcelona-esque 4-3-3, which City could play any number of different combinations in given their incredible strength in depth in both midfield and attack. Regardless of which formation, the flexibility offered by the City squad will mean Pellegrini can execute whichever formation he needs at any time whilst maintaining the stability of four at the back, something Mancini could not always do in his final season.

Finally, Pellegrini must succeed where Mancini failed hardest: the Champions League. Mancini could not shake his European curse during his stay at City and although both group stages saw City competing in arguably the most difficult groups of the competition, there is no excuse for failing to win a single match in last season’s contest. Thankfully Pellegrini has plenty of European pedigree to give City fans more confidence this season – his successes with Villarreal and Malaga were often achieved in difficult circumstances. The possibility of what he can do with financial muscle and the players currently comprising the City squad will leave many fans drooling. Nonetheless, success on this stage is not optional. Although Pellegrini will not be expected to win the competition immediately, progression into the knockout stages is a must.

Mancini’s departure from Eastlands was the result of a combination of factors. No one incident or failure in particular could be blamed for his sacking towards the end of last season, but there was enough in a mixture of poor tactical choices, questionable player signings, broken-down manager-player relationships and European failures for the higher-ups to agree that Mancini’s time at the club should end. Pellegrini looks to be a solid choice as his replacement and can hopefully leave Mancini’s mistakes behind, but only time will tell.

Without Robin van Persie, Manchester United would be 16th in the table, right?

The flaws in the ‘One Man Team’ argument are numerous, but the biggest of these flaws is that when arguing United would be a lesser team without van Persie, you assume every other team retains their own leading scorers. If you really want to argue that Manchester United would be facing relegation without their Dutch striker, you’ve also got to remove the goals of every other team’s lead goal scorer – because after all, if you provide the majority of goals, you’re clearly the ‘One Man’ in a ‘One Man Team’, right?

The truth is that if you take out not only Robin van Persie’s goals but also the goals of each team’s most prolific goalscorer, the Premier League table doesn’t change even half as dramatically as a 15-place drop. Before we take a look at that hypothetical table, here are the leading goal scorers for each Premier League team after Round 21 of competition and in brackets the amount of Premier League goals they have scored so far this season:

Arsenal – Theo Walcott (8)
Aston Villa – Christian Benteke (6)
Chelsea – Fernando Torres (7)
Everton – Marouane Fellaini (8)
Fulham – Dimitar Berbatov (7)
Liverpool – Luis Suarez (15)
Manchester City – Edin Dzeko (9)
Manchester United – Robin van Persie (16)
Newcastle – Demba Ba (13)
Norwich – Robert Snodgrass (4)
QPR – Adel Taarabt (4)
Reading – Adam Le Fondre (5)
Southampton – Rickie Lambert (8)
Stoke – Jonathan Walters (5)
Sunderland – Steven Fletcher (8)
Swansea – Michu (13)
Tottenham – Jermain Defoe (10)
Wigan – Aruna Kone (6)
West Bromwich Albion – Romelu Lukaku (7)
West Ham – Kevin Nolan (5)

Below we have the hypothetical Premier League table after Round 21 without the goals of each team’s top goal scorer, plus the difference in positions on the ladder from each team’s actual position in the Premier League at the same point in time.

So what can we learn from this hypothetical table?

Firstly, it’s important to note that no team moves more than four positions higher or three positions lower Without Top Scorers (-TS) than they currently sit Including Top Scorers (+TS). If you were shown this table before the beginning of the Premier League season it would not be overly difficult to believe – the biggest surprises would perhaps be Arsenal and Everton placing above Manchester United, who would be fourth, and Aston Villa lying four points off safety in nineteenth. The top of the table is much more compact than reality, with just four points separating first-placed Manchester City with Tottenham in sixth.

When you’re doing comparisons like this, you look for big differences. But there are not a great deal of significant differences in the –TS table from the +TS table. Unsurprisingly, what bigger differences there are come at the top of the table, where strikers such as van Persie, Walcott, Fellaini and Defoe have scored more goals on average to then lose -TS than lower-table counterparts Le Fondre, Benteke and Taarabt.

Even then, there are only six occasions on which the number of wins, draws or losses of any team -TS is different by a margin of more than two from their +TS number of wins, draws or losses. Those occasions include Arsenal (1 loss -TS, 4 losses +TS), Everton (6 draws –TS, 9 draws +TS), Manchester United (10 wins & 8 draws –TS, 17 wins & 1 draw +TS), Tottenham (6 draws –TS, 3 draws +TS) and West Ham (8 draws –TS, 5 draws +TS). Obviously the biggest of these margins features Manchester United, who drop from first to fourth without Robin van Persie’s sixteen goals. But even in this situation they are a mere two points off top spot, a far cry from the cries of ‘You’d be sixteenth without van Persie’ that are touted around by those claiming Manchester United are a ‘one man team’.

Perhaps the most damning statistic lies at the very bottom of the table. QPR would have just a single win without the brace of Adel Taarabt goals which gave his side victory over Fulham. This would leave them two points further adrift from safety than they currently sit +TS. Similarly, Aston Villa would also be more than a win away from escaping the relegation zone, sitting on just fourteen points without the prowess of Christian Benteke.

On a more positive note, despite losing Dimitar Berbatov, Robert Snodgrass and Theo Walcott respectively, Fulham, Norwich and Arsenal are the big winners, all gaining four places in the –TS table. In reality, this would indicate one of three things – that these teams have spread their goals around the team more evenly than others; that they have participated in just a small number of matches where other teams’ top scorers have scored crucial goals against them; or that conversely their own top scorers have scored a significant number of point-earning goals.

In Norwich’s situation only one of Robert Snodgrass’ four goals changed the outcome of a match – his goal against Tottenham in Round Three earned the Canaries a draw. But with only four goals this would seem to suggest that Norwich tend to spread their goals around the team. For Fulham, a number of Berbatov’s finishes have changed the outcomes of their matches, with goals from the former Manchester United striker earning the Cottagers draws against Reading and Arsenal.

For Arsenal, these statistics should have a serious impact on their thought process when deciding whether or not to re-sign Theo Walcott.

Walcott has scored eight goals this season, but just one of these – his goal in the first minute against Everton – was scored in a match with a victory margin of less than two goals. Three more could be considered important in the context of their games – his goal as a substitute against West Ham that put Arsenal 2-1 up en route to a 3-1 victory and his first and second of a hatrick against Newcastle, putting them 1-0 and 4-3 up respectively. But for someone who wants the kind of money and position as central striker that he is asking for, Theo’s goals reveal that he is not delivering when it really counts:

– One goal in a 6-1 win over Southampton (Scored the last goal of the game in the 87^th minute as a substitute)

– One goal in a 3-1 win over West Ham (Scored second as a substitute)

– One goal in 5-2 win over Tottenham (Scored the last goal of the game in the 90^th minute against ten men – despite starting)

– One goal in a 1-1 draw with Everton (Scored in first minute)

– One goal in a 2-5 win over Reading (Scored the last goal of the game in the 80^th minute – despite starting)

– Three goals in a 7-3 win over Newcastle (Scored first and fourth – but also scored last goal of the game in the 91^st minute when 6-3 up)

When you also remove Marouane Fellaini’s goal as Everton’s top scorer in the 1-1 draw, the end result is confronting: you could remove every Theo Walcott goal this season and not a single net result would change. In the –TS table, when we remove Theo Walcott’s goals, Arsenal gain four places from their +TS position. Not an encouraging statistic for someone seeking a vastly improved contract at a top four club.

So that’s that. Let’s banish the idea of ‘RvP, the One Man Team’. If you remove RvP, you’ve also got to remove every other top scorer to even things out. Manchester United don’t go 16^th, they go 4^th – and only two points behind leaders Manchester City. Someone has to be the top scorer in every team – let’s instead sit back and enjoy watching the spectacular goals that van Persie delivers so consistently.

Note: One final interesting statistic – when you account for –TS, only five games across the 208 that have been played so far this season flipped the results on their heads. These results were:

– Manchester United’s 2-3 victory at Southampton (a 1-0 victory for the Saints without RvP’s hat trick and Rickie Lambert’s goal),

– Manchester City’s 1-2 victory over West Brom (a 1-0 win for the Baggies without Dzeko’s brace),

– Reading’s 2-1 victory over Everton (an 0-1 victory for Everton minus Le Fondre’s double),

– QPR’s 2-1 win against Fulham (as mentioned above, an 0-1 win for Fulham without Taarabt’s goals), and:

– Manchester City’s 3-4 victory against Norwich (a 3-2 win without another Dzeko brace).