Three titles for real, three without City: 2009/10, 2014/15 and 2016/17. Take City out and none of Chelsea’s championships moves. The margins do. A title won by a point on the final day of 2009/10 is won by seven. An eight-point title in 2014/15 becomes a 14-point one. In 2016/17 champions by seven becomes champions by five.
The one real change comes last. In 2017/18 Chelsea finished fifth on 70 and went into the Europa League. Without City they finish fourth on the same 70, and the Champions League group stage replaces it. Top-four finishes go from six to seven.
Across the nine seasons Chelsea took 21 points off City in 18 league games: six wins, three draws, nine defeats. All 21 come off. Twice, in 2013/14 and 2016/17, they were the only club to beat City home and away, and so the club that loses most: six points each time. In 2016/17 it hardly registers. 93 becomes 87, and Antonio Conte’s side, 13 league wins in a row after the switch to 3-4-3, are still first.
The seasons in between barely move. Second on 71 in 2010/11 is second on 68. Sixth in 2011/12 becomes fifth on 61: the 2–1 in December, City’s first league defeat of that season, goes, and Chelsea still win the FA Cup and the Champions League in Munich. Third in 2012/13 becomes second on 74. And in 2015/16, beaten 3–0 home and away by City, the defending champions keep all 50 points and climb from tenth to eighth, the biggest climb in that season’s table.