Man City 2017-18: The Only 100-Point Premier League Season

On 13 May 2018, in the 94th minute of the final round, Gabriel Jesus took down a long pass from Kevin De Bruyne and dinked the ball over the Southampton goalkeeper, Alex McCarthy. It was Manchester City's 106th goal of that Premier League season and their 100th point. No team had ever reached three figures in the competition's history. Eight seasons on, nobody else has. That afternoon at St Mary's closed out the most dominant campaign English football has seen since the league took the Premier League name, and a season that now functions less as a memory than as a unit of measurement.

Guardiola's second year

The context helps explain the scale of it. In his first season in England, 2016-17, Pep Guardiola had finished third on 78 points and without a single trophy, something that had never happened to him before as a manager. The following summer City rebuilt the squad around a very specific idea of how they wanted to play: a goalkeeper who starts the attack with his feet, full-backs who step inside, and a midfield that does not give the ball away under pressure. The 2017-18 season opened with a win and a draw, and from the third match onwards the team stopped resembling anything the competition had seen before.

Eighteen wins in a row

City drew 1-1 with Everton in the second round and then strung together eighteen consecutive league victories, running from August to December 2017. It was a record for the Premier League and for the English top flight. By the time the run ended, late in the year, the gap at the top was the sort nobody claws back. The title was mathematically sealed with five matches still to play, equalling the earliest title win on record. And the truly striking part was not simply how much they won, but how little they lost: two defeats in 38 matches and only four draws all season.

The records that fell

The list of marks is long and almost all of them still stand. Curiously, City did not take the Golden Boot that year: Mohamed Salah finished on 32 goals and Sergio Agüero, City's leading league scorer, ended on 21. What City did instead was spread the scoring right across the squad and post the highest collective numbers the competition has recorded. Kevin De Bruyne finished as the season's leading provider with 16 assists, including the one for the goal that brought up the hundred. These are the figures that side left behind:

• 100 points: the only club to reach three figures in the Premier League. The previous record was Chelsea's 95 in 2004-05.
• 32 wins from 38 matches, with four draws and only two defeats.
• 106 goals scored, the highest total in a Premier League season.
• A goal difference of plus 79, with just 27 goals conceded.
• 18 consecutive league wins between August and December 2017, an English top-flight record.
• 16 away wins and 50 points collected on the road, both competition records.
• 19 points clear of Manchester United, the biggest winning margin in the competition's history.
• The title mathematically won with five rounds still to be played.

The goal that was worth the hundred

City went into the final round on 97 points. Winning at Southampton meant reaching 100; anything else left the round number hanging, and with it the label nobody was ever going to take off them. The match went into stoppage time goalless. Then De Bruyne lifted his head and threaded a long pass over the defence; Gabriel Jesus took it in his stride and lifted it over McCarthy. Southampton, who needed a point to guarantee survival, ended up staying up anyway thanks to results elsewhere. And City became the first and only centurions in Premier League history, sealing the milestone with a goal in stoppage time on the final day.

What became of those records

Eight seasons later, most of those marks are still intact, and the ones that have gone were equalled rather than beaten. Liverpool in 2019-20 came closest to all of it at once: 99 points, 32 wins and eighteen consecutive victories, which is to say exactly the same as City in two of the three categories and one point short in the headline one. City themselves matched their own 32 wins the following year, in the 98-point season. But the round number, the one that gave that team its nickname, remains theirs alone.

• The 100 points remain untouched: the closest anyone has come is Liverpool's 99 in 2019-20.
• The 32 wins were equalled by City themselves in 2018-19 and by Liverpool in 2019-20.
• The 18 straight wins were matched by Liverpool between October 2019 and February 2020.
• The 106 goals are still the most scored in a Premier League season.
• The 19-point margin has not been beaten either: Liverpool in 2019-20 got to 18.

Why it is still the benchmark

That City side did not win everything. They went out of the Champions League in the quarter-finals to Liverpool, 5-1 on aggregate, and they did not go unbeaten the way Arsenal did in 2003-04. They did win the League Cup, beating Arsenal 3-0 in the final at Wembley, and they steamrollered the championship. Eight years on, every time a team starts a Premier League season strongly, the immediate reference point is the same one: how many points are they on compared with the 2017-18 pace. That is probably the neatest summary of what that team achieved. They did not just win a league; they became the scale against which everyone who followed is judged.

"One hundred points, 106 goals, 32 wins and 19 to spare: the season that set the Premier League ceiling."

• Simulate all 38 Premier League rounds and see whether your side reaches 100 points.
• Change any result of the season and watch the final table shift with it.
• Compare your simulation with the real standings to see where the record is won.
• Check the supercomputer for every club's title probability.

"Open the Premier League simulator and find out how hard 100 points really is."