Three titles change hands.

On Christmas Day 2009 Manchester City were sixth, 12 points behind Chelsea with a game in hand. Two years later they were top on Christmas Day for the first time since 1929. By the last day of 2017/18 they had 100 points. In between they won three league titles.

Now take them out. Every cup final stands. Every other league result stands. Only City go, with the 38 league games they played each season: 342 matches across nine seasons. What is left is nine tables of 19 clubs, and a different decade.

The titles

Start with the trophy, because that is where City's absence is loudest. In six of the nine seasons the champion is the same club either way: Chelsea in 2009/10, 2014/15 and 2016/17, Manchester United in 2010/11 and 2012/13, and Leicester in 2015/16, still ten points clear. The other three are the three City won.

2011/12 is the one everybody remembers. City and United finished level on 89 points and City took the title on goal difference, the first Premier League title decided that way. Sergio Agüero's winner against QPR arrived 15 seconds after the final whistle at Sunderland, where United had won 1–0. Take City out and there is no finish to remember. United lose nothing, because City beat them in both league games, and win the league by 20 points, 89 to Tottenham's 69.

2013/14 turns on a slip. In late April Liverpool lost 2–0 at home to Chelsea after Steven Gerrard slipped and Demba Ba scored; City won their last five league games and the title by two points. Without City, Liverpool's 84 points become 81, and they are champions, three clear of Arsenal.

2017/18 is the closest of all. City's 100 points left United 19 behind. Without City, United's 78 beat Tottenham's 77 by a single point, and José Mourinho is champion. For real, he was sacked on 18 December 2018, with United sixth and 19 points behind Liverpool.

Read the rebuilt champions in order and United win three in a row, from 2010/11 to 2012/13. Those were Sir Alex Ferguson's last three seasons; he announced his retirement in May 2013.

Ferguson's last three seasons, three titles.

The fourth place

If the titles are the headline, fourth place is the story, and Tottenham have the biggest part in it.

For real, Spurs finished in the top four five times in these nine seasons, and one of those didn't count. In 2011/12 they were fourth and still went into the Europa League, because Chelsea, sixth, won the Champions League in Munich, and under the rules then in force the holders' place came out of fourth. Without City, Spurs are in the top four in eight seasons of nine, every one with a Champions League place, some through the play-off round. Three are new, in 2010/11, 2012/13 and 2014/15, and in 2011/12 they are second, out of Munich's reach.

2012/13 is the cruellest. Spurs' 72 points was then the highest for a club finishing outside the top four in a 38-game Premier League season; they missed fourth by a point. Without City they have three points fewer and finish fourth, ten clear of Liverpool.

In 2014/15 they lose nothing at all. City beat them 4–1 at home in October and 1–0 away in May, so all 64 points stand, and 64 is fourth, four clear of Southampton.

Top four in eight of nine seasons: Tottenham, without City.

Everyone else

The other Champions League places go round the table one at a time. Everton, fifth in 2013/14 in Roberto Martínez's first season after David Moyes, finish fourth on the same 72 points. Arsenal, fifth in 2016/17 and outside the top four for the first time in 20 years, finish third, two points above Liverpool, and go straight into the Champions League group stage.

Two more fifth-placed sides make the top four, and they have something in common. Manchester United were fifth on goal difference behind City in 2015/16; Chelsea were fifth in 2017/18. Both managers won the FA Cup that May, and both were sacked within two months of the final. Sky Sports reported that Louis van Gaal went after “a fifth-place finish in the Premier League and failure to qualify for the Champions League”. Antonio Conte went on 13 July. Without City, United are fourth on 62 and Chelsea fourth on 70.

Liverpool twice take the Europa League place for fifth, in 2010/11 and 2012/13; for real, sixth and seventh sent them nowhere. Newcastle finish fourth in 2011/12, but that year fourth wasn't a Champions League place, because Chelsea took it as holders.

The one club pushed down

Almost every change in these nine tables is somebody's gain. There is one exception. On the last day of 2010/11 Blackpool went down, beaten 4–2 at Old Trafford, and Wolves survived in 17th on 40 points despite losing 3–2 at home to Blackburn. Blackpool took no points off City. Wolves took three, from a 2–1 win in October.

Without City, Blackpool's 39 points are enough for 16th, and Wolves and Birmingham, 37 each, fall below them. Wolves go down instead. Sporting Intelligence put the cost of relegation that May at about £40m; in the rebuilt table it is Wolves' bill, not Blackpool's. For real, Wolves were relegated the following season anyway, with three games to spare, in April 2012.

No other club changes category downward in nine seasons, and no other relegation changes. The drop is where City's absence matters least: they took points off the bottom clubs like everyone else, and the bottom three stay the bottom three in eight seasons of nine.

What it meant

Without City the decade belongs to the old guard. United win four titles and Chelsea three; Liverpool and Leicester win one each.

Which of the three moved titles would you take? United's by 20, with no finish anyone would remember; Liverpool's, with the slip still in it; or Mourinho's, by a single point? And for Tottenham, is eight top-four finishes in nine seasons a bigger change than any trophy?

Take City out of nine seasons and three trophies move. A Champions League place moves in eight.