Pep Guardiola has destroyed the idea that winning the Premier League Manager of the Month award is a curse rather than a blessing.
The Manchester City manager has been announced as the winner of the November award after winning all three Premier League games in the month - against Manchester United, Everton and West Ham - and also seeing off Club Brugge and Paris St Germain in the Champions League for a 100 per cent record.
And that might have more superstitious Blues groaning ahead of tomorrow’s visit of Wolves - with an erstwhile reputation as a bogey club - to the Etihad Stadium tomorrow.
The idea that winning the award inevitably led to a drop in standard - and usually a bad result in the game immediately afterwards - arose 15 years ago.
And the stats backed it up, showing that since its inception in 1993, until 2005, average points earned dropped from 2.6 in the month in question to 1.6 in the next match after the recipient was announced.
The suspicion that the award angered the football gods was reinforced in 2018-19 when the first three Managers of the Month that season - Nuno Espirito Santo (Wolves), Havi Gracia (Watford) and Eddie Howe (Bournemouth) all lost in the game after they were announced.
But as Guardiola picks up his tenth award in five and a half years, he has done more than anyone to kill the myth of the cu4rse.
In the nine games following his previous awards, Guardiola has won eight and lost just one - the 4-3 defeat at Liverpool in January 2018 that ended their unbeaten start to the domestic season.
In fact, City tend to record emphatic wins in the game immediately after the award, racking up 28 goals and conceding just five in the nine games to dates.
The November award means that only Sir Alex Ferguson (27) and Arsene Wenger (15) have won more monthly awards than the City boss, who is tied in third place with current West Ham manager David Moyes.
