Man City will hope to avoid Premier League fixture repeat but trait will give them confidence

Manchester City will soon have a clearer idea of what their 2022/23 schedule will look like, when the Premier League fixtures are revealed at 9am on Thursday 16 June.

The upcoming campaign is going to look a little different to previous seasons, largely because of the need to accommodate a mid-season World Cup. The season will begin a week early on the weekend of 6/7 August, and pause for a six-week break after the 16th round of fixtures on 12/13 November.

The season will then resume on Boxing Day, eight days after the World Cup final, and will end on 28 May.

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Pep Guardiola will be hoping for a gentle run of opening fixtures to ease his side into the new season, but if recent history has taught us anything it's that the most important thing is how you finish, not start.

Looking back over the last three seasons, it's clear that City are not the team that is going to run away with the league in the first couple of months. In 2019/20 City took 13 points from their opening six games - 18 points were on offer, in 2020/21 that tally fell to 11, before rising back to 13 in 2021/22. Clearly, Guardiola's side take a while to move up through the gears.

City won the title in both 2020/21 and 2021/22, yet in both it took several months for the Blues to reach the summit. City endured a poor start to the former campaign, taking just 20 points from a possible 36 available, and it took them until the end of January 2021 to reach the top of the table. Yet from that point on, they didn't relinquish top spot.

It was a similar story this season. After a 0-2 home defeat to Crystal Palace left the defending champions five points off top spot