There was a tweet going around last week praising Manchester City’s home record in the Champions League which did not quite tell the full story.

It said, “Man City haven’t lost at home in the Champions League since 2018, in a 2-1 loss to Liverpool. 🤯”, which is not quite right because they lost to Lyon in September 2018.

Man City haven’t lost at home in the Champions League since 2018, in a 2-1 loss to Liverpool. 🤯

FORTRESS ETIHAD WILL BE READY NEXT WEEK! 🔵 pic.twitter.com/17S8RJC0z5

— Footy Accumulators (@FootyAccums) May 10, 2023

But by digging a little deeper it is clear to see how impressive City’s run actually is. Since that Lyon game, they have played 25 games and won 23 of them, with just two draws — a win percentage of 92.

A simple case of ‘good team wins at home’, like you would get anywhere else? Not really. In the same period, Real Madrid have lost six home games and drawn four. Liverpool have lost five and drawn four. Bayern Munich have lost two and drawn two. Chelsea, winners in 2021, have lost five and drawn four.

Barcelona have lost four, Juventus six, Paris Saint-Germain five. Atletico Madrid have lost three and only won once in their last 11 European home games.

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So what City are doing really is quite special. Especially given the draws did not come against Europe’s top sides but in dead rubbers against Shakhtar Donetsk and Sporting Lisbon when progression to the next round was already assured.

The primary reason is that City are a very special team, better than most (if not all) others, with an unusual ability to stay consistent over a number of years. In the Premier League in that period at home, for comparison, they have won 74 of their 91 games, a win percentage of 81.

Ahead of the semi-final first leg against Real Madrid last week, Rodri gave an insight into the reasons why his side has been able to fight for the title and Champions League at this stage of the season for the past three years.

“We have staff behind us who push us every year to be better and better,” he said. “We have new players coming in and we try to teach them this level of ambition, of hunger, because when you win, win, win, of course… you need something inside to go again.

“You have to have the proper mentality to feel like a small team and fight like a small team — because if you feel something bigger you will be confused. That’s why we do it: we feel small, we fight like a small team, run like a small team and then we have top-quality players who deserve everything.”

Part of that, especially when it comes to the Champions League, is Pep Guardiola’s insistence on playing strong teams packed with senior players even in those supposed dead rubbers — a phrase he does not like.

Another part, which becomes more relevant ahead of the clash against Madrid on Wednesday, is that the Etihad Stadium comes to life in the bigger games.

Whether against Liverpool in the league in recent years or PSG, Bayern or Madrid in Europe, there is a buzz around the Etihad that belies the usually lazy stereotypes about City’s home support.

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In reality, most of the big cathedrals of European football are not quite so rowdy for routine matches but suddenly come to life for the biggest spectacles. The Etihad is no different.

There is a degree of fear among the fanbase this time that the club have undermined their own chances of creating a fierce atmosphere by altering their ticketing criteria for the Madrid game.

For the first time this season, City fans did not have to have attended any other games this season to buy a ticket for Wednesday night. The complaint is that those who have been to loads of games this season joined the same queue as everybody else and have been overtaken by ‘tourists’. There is an assumption — which, it must be said, is not especially watertight — that those newcomers will not know how to make an atmosphere.

It is easy to imagine that the football on display will sort that out, if it is an issue at all. City — well, Kevin De Bruyne — have a knack for scoring early goals in these big games that tend to drag everything else along with them.

Last season against Real Madrid, he scored within two minutes; three weeks before that game he had scored inside five against Liverpool. A few weeks ago, he scored after seven minutes against Arsenal which, yet again, set the tone.

It may be a coincidence that City score early goals in their biggest games at this stage of the season but it does mark out a difference compared to their away games in Europe in particular.

Since the home defeat against Lyon four and a half years ago, City have played 27 games away from home and won 14, with nine draws and four defeats. They have scored 49 and conceded 22, an average of 1.81 for and 0.81 against.

City have actually drawn their last five Champions League away games, for a variety of reasons: in Copenhagen, they had a man sent off in the first half and were happy to settle for a draw; in Dortmund, a draw suited both them and the home side.

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At Bayern, they hardly needed to exert themselves given they were 3-0 up from the first leg but against RB Leipzig and Real Madrid, with the first legs away from home, a more cautious approach has been obvious.

In both of those games, Guardiola did not use any substitutes and the explanations were basically identical.

“With the transitions and the way they play, you have to have a lot of control,” he said in Leipzig. “That’s why the players that we had, like (Ilkay) Gundogan, like Riyad (Mahrez), we have the extra passes and that’s what we need, especially in the first leg. Maybe in the second leg, I will be crazy and play with nine strikers and make up-and-downs. But in this game, I felt I need this type of control because, when it’s open, German teams are better than us.”

A few days after the draw in Madrid he offered this: “I thought a lot in the last minutes about making a substitution in the Bernabeu or not. The players on the bench are so, so dynamic in their movements, especially Phil (Foden), Julian (Alvarez), a little bit Riyad. But in that moment, we didn’t need that.”

Aside from arguing that Mahrez gives them ‘extra passes’ in one example but is, to some extent, more dynamic in another, Guardiola’s comments show perfectly how City are happy to keep games tight away from home — which is something they tried did at Tottenham in 2019, too.

We are used to seeing English teams go away from home in Europe and play for a draw, or even a narrow defeat, by putting men behind the ball and digging in. City effectively do the same thing but they do it with the ball — more passes, fewer risks.

There will be an element of that at home: they will not rush things on Wednesday, especially if Madrid sit back and wait for counters, but there will not be the same level of caution.

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“We will try to adjust something maybe in the second leg to be more fluid and play with a bit more rhythm because we play at home and at home we feel comfortable with our people,” Guardiola said in Madrid last week.

And, as Jack Grealish put it: “At the Etihad, we feel unstoppable.”

(Top photo: Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)