Most Points in a Premier League Season: Man City's 100

The most points in a Premier League season is 100, set by Manchester City in 2017–18. They are the only team in English top-flight history to reach a century of points, which is why that side is remembered by a single nickname: the Centurions.

For a game built around the idea of a perfect season, City’s 100 is the most important number in the record book — because it is the closest anyone has come, and it still falls well short. A perfect 38-0 season is worth 114 points. City reached 100. The 14-point gap between those two figures is the whole reason this site exists.

The record: Manchester City, 100 points

Pep Guardiola’s 2017–18 team finished with a record that had never been matched: 32 wins, 4 draws, 2 defeats. The 32 wins were themselves a new English top-flight record. So was the 100-point total, the 106 goals scored, and the +79 goal difference. It was, by almost every statistical measure, the best league season English football had ever produced.

And yet look closely at the record and the imperfection is right there. Two defeats. Four draws. Six of their 38 matches did not end in a City win. A perfect season allows none of that.

The highest points totals in Premier League history

City’s century sits at the top of a short list of genuinely dominant seasons. Here are the highest totals in the 38-game era:

Team	Season	Points	W–D–L
Manchester City	2017–18	100	32–4–2
Manchester City	2018–19	98	32–2–4
Liverpool	2019–20	99	32–3–3
Liverpool	2018–19	97	30–7–1
Chelsea	2004–05	95	29–8–1
Manchester City	2021–22	93	29–6–3

Two things stand out. First, Liverpool’s 97 in 2018–19 was the fourth-highest total ever recorded — and it won them nothing, because City edged the same season on 98. In almost any other year, 97 points is a comfortable title. Second, even Liverpool’s 2018–19 side, which lost only once all season, drew seven games. Losing rarely is not the same as winning always.

Manchester United’s 92 points in 1993–94 sometimes appears near the top of these lists, but it came in a 42-game season and belongs to the older format. Across 38 games, City’s 100 is the ceiling.

Why 100 is 14 short of perfect

This is where the record ties directly into the game. The maths is fixed: 38 matches, three points per win, so a flawless campaign is worth 38 × 3 = 114 points. That number — 114 — is the true summit. City’s 100 is the highest anyone has ever climbed, and it leaves a 14-point gap to the top.

Those 14 points are not abstract. They are two defeats worth six points, and four draws worth eight points of the maximum, all of which the greatest league team ever assembled still dropped. If the best season in the competition’s history falls 14 points short of perfection, it gives you a sense of the distance involved. A team does not need to be merely excellent to go 38-0. It needs to be excellent 38 times in a row, with no off days, no backs-to-the-wall away draws, no shock defeats. City managed 32 of those wins. Even they could not manage six more.

For the fuller argument, see our guide on why a perfect 38-0 season is almost impossible, and on the crucial difference between going unbeaten and going perfect — the distinction that separates Arsenal’s Invincibles from a side that has never existed.

The takeaway

A hundred points was so far beyond anything the league had seen that it felt like the finished article. It wasn’t. It was the best available answer to a question no one has ever fully answered — how close can a team get to winning them all? The honest reply, after more than three decades of the Premier League, is 100 points out of a possible 114. Close enough to be historic. Far enough that a perfect 38-0 remains exactly what it has always been: unclaimed.