Not that I am a fan of the city, but for me the relatively poor performance of the club was a surprise throughout the previous season. I may have found the real reason for it. And because we will start the last month of this summer’s transfer window, it might be something that teams want to take into account when buying players.
You see, there were just too many babies in the team. And by babies I mean real babies. Two players who stay behind considerably in the city team last season were Jack Grealish and Erling Haaland. For a long time readers may remember that I consider Jack Grealisk one of the most overrated players in the gameand his season was so bad that there are Lots of rumors About where he could move. In the meantime, Erling Haaland, which I think is one of the best strikers in the world, perhaps the best, had a definitely bad season for his standards.
What do these guys have in common? They both became fathers for the first time at the end of 2024; Grealisch in October And Haaland in December.
Now, when I hear that someone is becoming a father for the first time, I have to think of something that a friend of mine told me. The first day back in the office, his boss greeted him with eternal wisdom: “So you now also come to the office to sleep.”
Becoming a father creates a lot of stress. As a result, many people will keep their eyes off the ball (sorry, but no regrets for the pun), as priorities shift. When it comes to football players, A New study by David and Robert Butler has shown that elite footballers experience a deterioration of their performance after they have become fathers for the first time.
The graph below shows that expected helps to deteriorate as the birth of the child approaches. When hearing the news that their partner is pregnant, their performance remains stable. However, about one to two months before birth, the number of expected assists starts to fall considerably to the point at which the effect becomes statistically significant. Once they had had the baby, the expected assists of new fathers fell almost a third compared to nine months earlier. A team like City could normally digest the decline for one of his star players, but two core team members who at the same time have a baby turned out to be too much.
Decrease in the expected assists in the months before and after they first became a father
Source: Butler and Butler (2024)
This decrease in performance may be due to the shrink of the left hippocampus after birth – not in the babies but the father’s brain. There have been numerous studies of newly beaten fathers, and one of the common findings is that testosterone levels are falling for new fathers. Recently, a study Discovered that the more testosterone levels fall, the more the left hippocampus shrinks in the brain of fathers.
The brain literally shrinks. Unfortunately, the left Hippocampus is the area in the brain that is most involved in Save and retrieve verbal and narrative memoriesLike – I don’t know – the game plan that the coach gave the team before the game, or the coordinated movements that were learned during the practice sessions.
Decrease in the left hippocampus correlates with a deterioration in testosterone after he has become a father
Source: Saxbe et al. (2023)
There you have it. The real reason why City was so bad last year. And let’s discuss why Manchester United ended up in 15one Position last season …
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