Manchester City currently find themselves on a run of one win in 11 matches. It’s a scarcely believable collapse from an all-conquering team who, despite not being at their very, very best before that run, had nevertheless managed to win quite a lot of games and also lose absolutely none of them before going completely to sh*t.
That got us thinking – always dangerous – about where such a calamitous run might sit in a big, niche list of the worst ‘one win in x games’ runs for the Big Six.
As ever, with any discussion of the Big Six we need first pin down exactly when that era begins. Other definitions are available, but we’re counting it as from the 2009/10 season onwards here and are guilty of only very slightly retrofitting that to be able to include a notably bad Liverpool run from that very season.
We do believe the case is sound, nevertheless. If we take as read the old Red-Cartel-plus-Chelsea Big Four, then what matters is when Man City and Spurs officially joined the collective. We will accept that nobody was yet calling it a Big Six in 2009/10, but in retrospect it does fit pretty well. It was the first season City finished in the top six of the Premier League, for one thing, and they’ve never left it since.
Spurs had previously had a brief dalliance with the top five but had then finished 11th and eighth before finishing fourth in 2010 and qualifying for the Champions League for the first time. They have only finished outside the top six twice in 14 subsequent seasons, and those finishes were seventh and eighth.
Also, if you make a massive league table from the start of 2009/10 you get a pretty good idea of why people talk about a ‘Big Six’ for that era and why no, it is not in fact a Sky conspiracy or somesuch. Spurs are sixth in that big table, obviously, but with 1051 points they are nearly 250 points clear of seventh-placed Everton, who are themselves 129 points clear of eighth-placed West Ham.
Even as comfortably the titchiest and least successful of the six, Spurs’ tallies for wins, points and goals scored sit closer to table-topping City than they do to the best-of-the-rest Toffees.
So there. Anyway, now let’s get on with the real business: taking the p*ss out of all six of those big daft bastards.
Rules are very simple. One win in the largest number of games within a single season, all major domestic and European competitions count. No overlapping runs are allowed – essentially no games, good or bad, can be counted towards in more than one streak. And wherever the overall length of the dodgy run is equal then most defeats is the tiebreaker.
10=) Liverpool: 1 win in 9 games, October-November 2012
The Highlight: Liverpool 3-0 Wigan
Crisis, what crisis areas for Liverpool and their beleaguered new manager Brendan Rodgers as a Luis Suarez double saw the Reds cruise to victory and snap a five-game winless run in the second half after a goalless first 45 minutes in this big Premier League clash.
The Lowlights: Five draws and three defeats
The defeats were spread across three competitions, with Liverpool going down 2-1 at Spurs in a game where Gareth Bale scored for both teams as well as crashing out of the Capital One Cup to Swansea and losing a Europa League group game at Anzhi Makhachkala.
There was also a Europa League draw at home to Young Boys as well as Premier League stalemates against Everton, Newcastle, Chelsea and Swansea to leave Rodgers’ side firmly encamped in the bottom half.
What Happened Next:
Despite the Europa League setbacks in their struggling run, a 1-0 win at Udinese in their final group game would see Liverpool emerge top of the pile from a three-way tie with Anzhi and Young Boys. They would then, however, crash out on away goals to Zenit in the first knockout round.
Premier League form did at least pick up sufficiently for Liverpool to climb to seventh in the final reckoning, with some thumping great wins – most notably a 6-0 at Newcastle in April – offering a glimpse of what was to come in the following season.
10=) Arsenal: 1 win in 9 games, March-April 2011
The Highlight: Blackpool 1-3 Arsenal
A famous win by the seaside. Think we all remember where we were when early goals from Abou Diaby and Emmanuel Eboue set the Gunners on their way to an against-the-odds win over Charlie Adam, Gary Taylor-Fletcher, DJ Campbell and co.
The Lowlights: Five draws and three defeats
The absolute archetype of mid-to-late Wenger Era Arsenal collapses, in which a season of apparently enormous promise turns entirely to dust as the days lengthen through spring.
This run actually annoyingly starts just after the defeat to Birmingham in the League Cup final, with a pesky 5-0 win over Leyton Orient in the FA Cup getting in the way, but it still involves the dying of dreams across three further competitions.
A 2-1 win in the home leg of the Champions League last-16 tie with peak Barcelona was undone a month later with a 3-1 loss at Camp Nou, while FA Cup hopes were dashed by a 2-0 quarter-final defeat at Old Trafford.
Arsenal only actually lost one league game during this specific run – at Bolton, naturally – but goalless home draws with Sunderland and Blackburn were hugely damaging and even a fightback from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 at West Brom not really enough as they slowly tumbled out of title contention.
They also blew a 3-1 lead at Tottenham of all places and had that very silly 1-1 draw with Liverpool where both goals were penalties deep into added time.
What Happened Next:
A 1-0 win over Man United did open up the title race with three matches to go, but more for Chelsea than Arsenal who were still six points adrift of the leaders and three adrift of the Blues despite this win.
United would hold on to take the title, while Arsenal managed only a single point from their remaining three games to blow a five-point lead over fourth-placed Manchester City and condemn themselves to the Champions League qualifying rounds, as was the style at the time.
9) Man United: 1 win in 9, November-December 2015
The Highlight: Manchester United 2-1 Swansea
Goals from Anthony Martial and Wayne Rooney would prove just enough to end an eight-match run without a win for United despite Gylfi Sigurdsson’s equaliser for the Swans along the way.
The Lowlights: Four draws and four defeats
Spoiler alert, but it is really very rattling indeed to discover that the only Big Six club not to have managed double-figures for a run containing only a single win is Manchester United despite them being by far the likeliest of the six to be in crisis at any given moment in the last decade or so of crushing mediocrity.
How did Moyes not manage it, for instance? Incredible. There was a run of 10 games last season that included only one regulation win, but it would seem churlish to include that when it did also feature extra-time FA Cup successes against Liverpool and Coventry. Especially as United would go on to win that actual trophy. So, grudgingly, it is struck from the record on the flimsy technicality of actually containing three wins if you want to be like that about it.
All we’re left with, then, is this bleak winter run under the bleak stewardship of Louis van Gaal in what remains the single most ridiculous season of the Premier League era, 2015/16.
To make it even more annoying that it doesn’t quite tip over into double-figures, it’s also an eight-match run without victory bookended by 2-1 wins over Watford and Swansea. They were so close!
Three of the four draws were goalless and at home, so bonus points there. PSV in the Champions League as well as Chelsea and West Ham in the Premier League the opponents there. The other draw was a 1-1 draw at Leicester which is actually a decent result when you remember which season this is.
The four defeats all came in a row in the middle of it all, and all were pretty wretched given the opposition involved. With all due respect, Wolfsburg, Bournemouth, Norwich, Stoke is not really a run of games from which you should emerge with absolutely nothing. Not when This Is Manchester United Football Club We’re Talking About.
What Happened Next:
Failing to qualify from a Champions League group containing PSV, Wolfsburg and CSKA Moscow was pretty bad, as was losing to Liverpool in the last 16 after parachuting into the Europa.
The league season never really got going in any convincing way as United stumbled home in fifth to miss out on Champions League qualification.
United did, though, do what United have so often done during this lengthy era of despair: somehow emerge with a trophy to show for it, winning the FA Cup after cruelly crushing the dreams of Crystal Palace and Dancing Alan Pardew.
8) Tottenham: 1 win in 9 games, February-July 2020
The Highlight: Tottenham 2-0 West Ham
Tottenham’s first win for four months came courtesy of a Tomas Soucek own goal and a late Harry Kane breakaway clincher in their second game of Project Restart.
The Lowlights: Two draws, five defeats, and a penalty shootout defeat
Compelling defeats home and away to RB Leipzig in the Champions League last 16 are obvious standouts, but let’s not forget the home penalty shoot-out defeat to Norwich in the FA Cup in a match best remembered now for Eric Dier storming the terraces afterwards.
Defeat at Chelsea barely registers by this point, while losing at home to Wolves in a game Spurs led twice is also weirdly on brand for a fixture that has always had a curious away bias for some reason.
The step forward against West Ham after seven games without a win, the bulk pre-Covid, was immediately followed by two back in a 3-1 humbling at Sheffield United.
What Happened Next:
Spurs actually did all right in Project Restart in the end. That defeat at Bramall Lane would be their last of the season, a run of four wins and two draws in their last six games – including a NLD win and a 3-0 success at Newcastle – lifting Spurs to flattering final position of sixth despite not managing to break the 60-point barrier.
7) Man United: 1 win in 9 games, April-May 2019
The Highlight: Manchester United 2-1 West Ham
The Hammers are a bit of a recurring theme here as being the team to provide a bit of much-needed succour for struggling big beasts. A pair of Paul Pogba penalties the order of the day here.
The Lowlights: Two draws and six defeats
Somehow feels much worse that this run came at the end of the season. Miserable way to go into the summer, especially as it all happened just after Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had been – unwisely, it turned out, handed a permanent contract.
There are some shockers in here. Home and away defeat to Barcelona saw the Champions League dream die at the quarter-final stage, which isn’t exactly mortifying. Following a 3-0 defeat at Barcelona with a 4-0 defeat at Goodison absolutely is mortifying, though. The Manchester Derby was lost 2-0 at Old Trafford, while relegated Cardiff won by the same score there on the final day of the season as United finished at the back of the Big Six pack.
Really not great when one of your less dispiriting results in the last two months of the season is a 1-1 draw at Huddersfield.
What Happened Next:
United would start 2019/20 with a deeply illusory 4-0 flattening of Chelsea. They would go on to win one of their next eight in the league before rolling in a distant third, 15 points behind Manchester City and 33 behind champions Liverpool.
6) Liverpool: 1 win in 10 games, September-November 2009
The Highlight: Liverpool 2-0 Manchester United
Okay, fair play. As highlights in miserable runs go, that’s actually pretty good. Especially as we’re talking about pre-doldrums United here as well.
In our admittedly sketchy memories of this long-distant era, all Liverpool-Man United games were required by law to contain a Fernando Torres goal and a Nemanja Vidic red card, so we’re delighted to note that both are present and correct here.
The Lowlights: Three draws and six defeats
Some dreadful nonsense in here from Rafa Benitez’s side. The last match before this run was a 6-1 win over Hull, so obviously Liverpool then failed to score a single goal at all in their next three games – defeats at Fiorentina, Chelsea and Sunderland.
They did at least manage to score in their next game, but it was small consolation in a 2-1 home Champions League defeat to Lyon. They went out of the Carling Cup at Arsenal, lost 3-1 at Fulham in the Premier League and rounded out the run with draws against Lyon, Birmingham and Man City before an early David Ngog goal proved enough to see off Debrecen.
What Happened Next:
A league season of streaks both good and bad ended with Liverpool seventh when the music stopped. Those ropey Champions League results in our noted run of woe contributed to Liverpool finishing a distant third behind Fiorentina and Lyon, thus dropping into the Europa League where they would eventually go out in the semi-finals to Atletico Madrid.
5) Chelsea: 1 win in 11 games, January-February 2023
The Highlight: Chelsea 1-0 Crystal Palace
A Kai Havertz goal just past the hour mark secured what would be an entirely unremarkable Premier League win were it not for the fact it would be Chelsea’s only win of any kind in the first two months of 2023.
The Lowlights: Four draws and six defeats
Poor Graham Potter. His and Chelsea’s miserable start to 2023 begins with a 1-1 draw at Forest followed by back-to-back defeats to Manchester City in the league and FA Cup. There’s a defeat and goalless draw against Fulham in here as well, another goalless encounter with Liverpool, a draw at West Ham, a defeat at Spurs and a Champions League last-16 first-leg loss at Borussia Dortmund that would at least have a happy ending of sorts.
What Happened Next:
Don’t want to give too much away here, but suffice to say we will be dealing with what eventually happened next in much greater detail in due course.
In the very short term, though, Chelsea actually won their next three games, including a 2-0 win against Dortmund to overturn that first-leg deficit.
4) Manchester City: 1 win in 11 games*, October 2024 onwards
The Highlight: Man City 3-0 Nottingham Forest
City were really quite good here, especially given how good a season Forest are having. Bernardo Silva, Kevin De Bruyne and Jeremy Doku were all on target in a win that while never one to right the ship entirely did at least hint at the worst being over. SPOILER: The worst was not over.
The Lowlights: Two draws and eight defeats
Worth noting straight away that the two draws are also quite rubbish here. If there’s a worse way to end a five-match losing run than drawing 3-3 at home to Feyenoord after being 3-0 up with 15 minutes to go then we’re yet to hear of it. And a 2-2 draw at struggling Crystal Palace in which you twice have to come back from a goal down isn’t much better.
But the defeats. Good grief, some of these are bad. A 2-1 defeat at Spurs in the Carabao seemed nothing more than minor irritant at the time given a much-changed team and previous solid formline, but Spurs do funny things to City. It’s no surprise at all that they both started this run and inflicted it’s standout thrashing a few weeks later.
There were also 2-1 league defeats at both Bournemouth and Brighton, wrapped around Ruben Amorim’s parting gift to Sporting and welcome gift to United.
City were well beaten at both Liverpool and Juventus before going down in the closing minutes of a Manchester Derby in which they were really very alarmingly sh*t indeed.
What Happens Next:
Aston Villa away doesn’t look like an ideal fixture in which to avoid making it one win in 12, while the fact Everton managed to so magnificently Dyche their way to a point at the Emirates recently means even that Boxing Day clash no longer looks like a gimme.
For City to equal top spot in this list they’ll also need to fail to beat Leicester and West Ham. To take top spot outright they’ll need to come unstuck at home to Salford in the FA Cup and then we really will be in the realm of the bizarre.
3) Tottenham: 1 win in 13 games, February-May 2011
The Highlight: Tottenham 3-2 Stoke
All the goals came in a 30-minute period in the first half – two from Peter Crouch and one from Luka Modric for Spurs, Matty Etherington and Kenwyne Jones for Stoke, although as will become clear it is slightly churlish to consider this the actual highlight of this particular run.
The Lowlights: Seven draws and five defeats
So straight away we must acknowledge that one of these draws was the second leg of the Champions League last-16 tie with Milan that secured Spurs a quarter-final spot in their first crack at the Big Cup since the 1960s. We’re going to go ahead and admit that’s not actually a bad result.
What is funny here, though, is the way this 13-game run begins immediately after one of their most famous recent wins – the 1-0 first-leg win at San Siro. In an unimprovably Spursy pair of results, that stunning away win was followed five days later by a 3-1 defeat at Blackpool.
A late Steven Fletcher equaliser earned Wolves a 3-3 draw a fortnight later, while the return leg against Milan was the first of three consecutive goalless draws. Fair to say it was also the best of them, with the others coming against West Ham and Wigan.
Spurs lost both legs of their Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid either side of the Stoke win, and then fought back for a 3-3 draw against Arsenal that makes its second appearance in this feature. Further draws came against West Brom and Blackpool to go with defeats at Chelsea and Man City.
What Happened Next:
Just to fully enshrine the ludicrous Spursiness of it all, what is statistically their worst run of the last 15 years began after a 1-0 win at Milan and ended with a 2-0 win at Anfield. Just absolute Peak Spurs, that. Even this year’s clown-car efforts have a way to go before they can match this for errant nonsense.
For good measure, Spurs followed that up by ending the season on a winning note against Birmingham thanks to a stoppage-time winner from Roman Pavlyuchenko.
Those two wins ensured Harry Redknapp’s daft lads would finish above Liverpool in fifth, which we can surely all agree is absolutely the most Spurs finishing position in the last 15 years.
2) Chelsea: 1 win in 14 games, March-May 2023
The Highlight: Bournemouth 1-3 Chelsea
Matias Vina cancelled out Conor Gallagher’s early strike, but late goals from Benoir Badiashile and Joao Felix saw Chelsea home to end a run of nine games without a win.
The Lowlights: Three draws and nine defeats
In a truly astonishing effort, Chelsea managed to play 28 games in the second half of the 2022/23 season and squeeze in two entirely separate, distinct runs of one win in more than 10 matches. The second and best/worst of those runs was this one to end the season – the overall run would in fact become one in 16 at the start of 2023/24.
It was a wild time in which Graham Potter was, inevitably, sacked and replaced by Actual Frank Lampard. It still feels like a fever dream. Mediawatch has never truly recovered from spending a whole day taking the p*ss out of the very idea and then watching in abject horror as it turned out to in fact be entirely true.
And didn’t it go well. Remarkably, Chelsea’s two near-barren runs sandwich a run of three straight wins but things soon went awry again. A run of three home games should’ve offered encouragement; instead, Chelsea drew with the Merseyside pair of Everton and Liverpool either side of defeat to Aston Villa.
Then they lost at Wolves, and went down 2-0 in both legs of the Champions League quarter-finals against Real Madrid. Domestically, there was more Stamford Bridge despair against both Brighton and Brentford to tee up a 3-1 defeat at Arsenal. They did manage to salvage draws at home against Nottingham Forest and Newcastle, but had nothing to show for a pair of trips to Manchester in between.
All in all a monumental effort from Chelsea here, delivering in five short months not one but two of the worst runs managed by the six biggest clubs in the land across a 15-year period. And what consequences have Chelsea faced for this disastrous effort? None whatsoever. We’ve designed it that way.
What Happened Next:
Stumbling home in 12th was, eight points adrift of even a top-half finish, was for some reason not enough to earn Lampard a permanent second crack at the job he considers his birthright. Mauricio Pochettino and four million more players arrived. It went badly, then quite well, then Poch was sacked as well.
Enter Enzo Maresca and more new players and the vaguely dispiriting confirmation that if you just keep spending billions of pounds on footballers and manager you probably will end up becoming quite good despite yourselves.
1) Arsenal: 1 win in 15 games, October-December 2019
The Highlight: West Ham 1-3 Arsenal
The Hammers again. What is it with them and helping out a big club in need? The Hammers led at half-time through Angelo Ogbonna but a quick-fire burst after the hour mark saw Arsenal to a desperately needed victory thanks to goals from Gabriel Martinelli, Nicolas Pepe and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. A set of goalscorers there that rather neatly encapsulates both how recent this history is yet also how very, very far away it now feels.
The Lowlights: Eight draws, five defeats and a penalty shootout defeat
This run is pretty much the origin story for Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal. The first seven of these 15 games came in the dog days of Unai Emery’s ill-starred reign, the next five under the handsome interim hand of Freddie Ljungberg and the last three under Arteta.
A 2-2 league draw with Palace kicks us off, a result that seems unremarkable enough until you realise Arsenal were actually 2-0 up after 10 minutes, before a wonderful slice of League Cup nonsense at Anfield in which Arsenal trailed 1-0 then led 3-1, 4-2 and 5-4 before ending absurdly in a 5-5 draw and penalty heartbreak. With the shoot-out ending 5-4 to Liverpool, this takes its place among the vanishingly few occasions in which a penalty shoot-out contains fewer goals than the match preceding it.
From here, Arsenal stumbled into a pair of 1-1 draws against Wolves in the Premier League and Guimaraes in the Europa before a 2-0 defeat at Leicester in which Jamie Vardy enjoyed his standard fun at the expense of North Londoners. The second goal being scored by James Maddison also a nice touch when viewed from 2024.
The Gunners needed a late Alexandre Lacazette goal to rescue a home draw against Southampton, lost at home to Eintracht Frankfurt in Emery’s last stand before scrambling a point from a 2-2 draw at Norwich. That League Cup fiasco apart, Arsenal were not being undone by the very best at this time.
Defeat at home to Brighton was followed by that one solitary win before another disappointing result in Europe – a 2-2 draw at Standard Liege.
What was at that time a customary walloping off Man City was duly delivered just before Christmas, before Arteta’s Arsenal conspicuously failed to break down a stubborn Everton side and had to settle for a goalless draw. An unthinkable result, these days, that.
And there was still just about time before 2019 was out for a draw with Bournemouth and defeat to Chelsea.
What Happened Next:
Well, Arteta is still there and we’re not sure many Arsenal fans waking up on January 1 2020 would believe you if you told them what’s happened in the last five years. A 2-0 win over Man United on New Year’s Day lifted the gloom, while less convincing but perhaps more significant was a nervy 1-0 FA Cup win over Leeds five days later. Arsenal would go on to lift that trophy in August in what remains, for all his good work, Arteta’s only silverware.
