Everton 1 Manchester City 3 : The Statistics

Manchester City claimed a deserved victory against Everton and we turn to look at some of the statistics underpinning the performance.

If you had spent the game listening to the commentary in the British media you would be forgiven for not realising that Manchester City ended up winning by a comfortable scoreline.

Gary Neville in particular spent much of the match repeatedly saying that the defence was poor, yet in many ways the defence actually did its job very well. It may not have been relaxing to watch but City actually faced the most shots on target in a Premier League game since Guardiola took over 121 PL games ago.

Given that information, to have restricted Everton to a solitary goal, should probably be regarded as an achievement.

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During the match City had 20 shots on goal, but only 9 ended up on target. That wastefulness in front of goal will at some point catch us out, but right now we are riding it out!

City maintained a pass accuracy of 90% which is a surprise given that is not how it felt actually watching the game.

Possession was at 63%, continuing the trend for this season. This is a marked shift from the highs of the last two seasons and probably reflects the tactical tweaks which have been made.

Given we are managing 90% passing, the reduced possession is not about giving the ball away, but maybe we are more content to alliw the opposition to share our ball.

There are a series of key individual player statistics which are illuminating for a range of different reasons.

David Silva became the fastest player to ever achieve 200 Premier League wins, doing so in just 289 games! This beat the previous record by 16 games!

Raheem Sterling scored his 100th career goal across all competitions in this match, his 77th for Manchester City.

Gabriel Jesus has now scored 22 goals in his last 21 starts for club and country. He has also now scored 5 goals against Everton in his last 5 appearances against them. Clearly they will not be relishing the prospect of facing him again!

Kevin De Bruyne has now achieved 8 assists in the first 7 games of the PL season. This is the first time any player has ever achieved this and De Bruyne is relentlessly closing in on the record number of assists in the competition.

Putting all of these to one side, this game was one where Riyad Mahrez probably shined brightest. He had 51 touches in the match and completed 51 of his 57 attempted passes.

Mahrez scored his 3rd goal in 4 appearances. In fact in his last 3 starts he has achieved 3 goals and 2 assists! That is why he is one of the first names on our team sheet this season.