Stat, Viz, Quiz 143: How Good Are Manchester City at This Time of Year?

Well, Arsenal fans, presumably, but for the neutral it was a fascinating weekend in the Premier League after the Gunners lost at home to Bournemouth, and Manchester City defeated Chelsea to close the gap at the top to just six points, with City having a game in hand.

On top of that, the two challengers play each other at the Etihad Stadium next week, where a win for Pep Guardiola’s men would really put the cat among the proverbial pigeons. They are in ominous form, too, which so often happens at this time of year. Just how good are City in the latter stages of a campaign, though? We reveal all in this week’s SVQ.

Speaking of potent teams, Bayern Munich simply cannot stop scoring goals. They broke a Bundesliga record at the weekend, and we’ll look at how their goalscoring compares historically.

And with just 58 days to go until the World Cup kicks off, we answer an Ask Opta question about this summer’s tournament, while we also quiz you on some Premier League facts.

With a terrific opportunity to cut Arsenal’s lead after Mikel Arteta’s men lost 2-1 to Bournemouth on Saturday, you would have expected Manchester City’s nerves to be jangling in a tricky-looking game at Chelsea on Sunday.

Not a bit of it. They won 3-0 fairly comfortably at Stamford Bridge to move within six points of the Gunners, whom they welcome to the Etihad for a top-of-the-table clash next Sunday.

Things felt slightly tense with the game 0-0 at half-time, but goals in the second half from Nico O’Reilly, Marc Guéhi and Jérémy Doku sealed a valuable three points.

Man City have only lost one of their last 19 Premier League games (W12 D6) and are unbeaten in their last nine (W6 D3), which is their joint-longest streak of the campaign.

There have been plenty of bumps in the road for City this season, but in their last three games they’ve beaten Arsenal 2-0 in the EFL Cup final, thrashed Liverpool 4-0 in the FA Cup, and eased past Chelsea 3-0 in the Premier League. You would certainly forgive Gunners fans for sweating just a bit.

And that is because Man City are renowned for putting their foot on the accelerator at this time of the season.

When playing within their final 10 games of Premier League seasons, City have lost just one of their last 43 matches, winning 32 of them and drawing 10. That’s 2.47 points per game on average.

Their one defeat in that time was away to Brentford on the final day of the 2022-23 campaign (1-0) when City had already sewn up the title.

The season before in 2023-24, they won nine and drew just one on their way to a fourth-successive championship.

Even last season when they finished 13 points behind champions Liverpool, City won seven and drew three of their last 10.

They may need to go perfect to win the league from here, but when it comes to Man City at this time of year, you really wouldn’t bet against them.

In SVQ 134 in February, we discussed Bayern Munich’s ruthless scoring powers, stating that they were well on course to obliterate their overall goals record in a single Bundesliga season.

On Saturday, they did just that with a 5-0 win at St. Pauli, making it 105 goals scored in the Bundesliga this season, breaking their previous record of 101 from the 1971-72 campaign.

With five games remaining of the 2025-26 Bundesliga season, how many more can Vincent Kompany’s side score?

They are averaging 3.6 goals per game, which if maintained would take them to a phenomenal 123 goals by the end of the campaign.

Their current total of 105 is a remarkable 45 more than any other team in the German top flight this season.

Indeed, in Bundesliga history (since 1963-64) Bayern are the only team to have scored at least 100 goals in a single campaign, and this is just the third time they have done so, after the aforementioned 1971-72 season and the 2019-20 campaign (100).

How does Bayern’s mammoth goal total compare across Europe’s top five leagues, though?

The next highest-scoring team is Barcelona, who have 84 goals in 31 La Liga games, while Inter have scored 75 in 32 Serie A outings. The fourth-highest scoring team in Europe’s top five leagues are Real Madrid with 65, which is an astonishing 40 fewer than Bayern. Of course, Kompany’s men face Madrid at the Allianz Arena in the second leg of their Champions League quarter-final on Wednesday.

Bayern’s 3.6 goals-per-game average is almost a full goal higher than the next best, Barcelona’s 2.7. In fact, only 16 teams across the five divisions are averaging at least 1.8 goals per game, half the amount of Bayern.

In European football history, the team to have scored the most league goals in a single season on record (top five leagues) are Torino, who managed a whopping 125 in 40 Serie A games way back in 1947-48.

The second most is Real Madrid’s 121 goals in 38 games in 2011-12, while three teams have previously scored 118 (all in 38 games).

It has very much helped Bayern having such potent forwards. Harry Kane (36 – 31 goals, 5 assists), Michael Olise (30 – 12G, 18A) and Luis Díaz (26 – 15G, 11A) are the top three players in the Bundesliga for goal involvements this season. Indeed, Kane and Olise are the top two in Europe’s top five leagues.

In fact, it is just the second time since detailed data collection began in 2004-05 that two players from a club in a Bundesliga season have reached 30 goal contributions, after Wolfsburg’s Grafite (33) and Edin Dzeko (32) in 2008-09. Díaz could make it three before the end of the campaign.

Bayern’s win at St. Pauli, combined with Arsenal’s loss to Bournemouth (Arsenal fans, we promise there won’t be many more mentions of that, honest) means that the Rekordmeister leapfrogged the Premier League side into first place in the Opta Power Rankings over the weekend.

Just how far can Bayern go? It seems, as the Germans would put it, alles ist möglich.

1. West Ham beat Wolves 4-0 on Friday in what was just the seventh time a Premier League team have won a game by at least four goals this season. Who are the only team to have won a game by at least five goals in the competition in 2025-26?

2. How many Premier League wins does Bournemouth boss Andoni Iraola now have over Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta?

3. How many goals has Brentford’s Igor Thiago scored against Everton this season?

4. Name either of the two players to have started a Premier League game and scored at a younger age than Liverpool’s Rio Ngumoha, who found the net against Fulham on Saturday aged 17 years and 225 days.

5. Speaking of youngsters, Archie Gray (20y 31d) became the second-youngest Tottenham Hotspur player to make 50 Premier League appearances for the club. Who is the only player to have reached that milestone quicker for Spurs in the competition?

Scroll to the bottom for the answers.

Our question this week comes from Michael P, who asks: “Now we know all the teams at the World Cup, do you know which group is in theory the most competitive?”

Do you have a stat-based question you’d like Opta to answer in a future edition of SVQ? Email us at [email protected] or message us on X @OptaAnalyst with #AskOpta and we’ll pick the best one.

Answer:

Yes, with the World Cup play-offs over, we now know all 48 competing nations at this summer’s tournament in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

We have therefore been able to look at each of the 12 groups and, based on the Opta Power Rankings for international teams, determined not only which group is likely to be the most competitive, but also which has the highest-rated teams on average.

The highest-rated is set to be Group I, consisting of France, Senegal, Norway and Iraq (average of 81.1). The lowest rated is Group B, featuring Switzerland, Canada, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Qatar (avg. of 69.7).

In terms of most competitive, just look at Group D. Turkey, Australia, Paraguay and the USA are all so closely rated you could draw a very small circle around them, so it’s anyone’s guess as to who will make it through from there. Also, Group A looks interesting, featuring another host in Mexico, alongside South Korea, Czechia and South Africa.

Group E has the biggest gap between the highest-rated team (Germany) and the lowest-rated side (Curaçao). The Blue Wave will be hoping to surprise a few people at their first ever World Cup, though.

If you’re wondering about the overall predictor numbers from the Opta supercomputer for the World Cup, all will be revealed soon at Opta Analyst.

Our Opta data hubs have detailed team and player stats, predictions, expected league tables and much more. Click/tap below to start your own data investigations.

Here's some of the latest data-driven offerings you can find on our website:

1. West Ham beat Wolves 4-0 on Friday in what was just the seventh time a Premier League team have won a game by at least four goals this season. Who are the only team to have won a game by at least five goals in the competition in 2025-26?

Arsenal (5-0 vs Leeds in August)

2. How many Premier League wins does Bournemouth boss Andoni Iraola now have over Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta?

Three – Only Pep Guardiola (7) and Jürgen Klopp (4) have more

3. How many goals has Brentford’s Igor Thiago scored against Everton this season?

Five – Three at the Hill Dickinson Stadium and two at the Gtech Community Stadium. He is the first player to score 5+ goals against the Toffees in a Premier League campaign

4. Name either of the two players to have started a Premier League game and scored at a younger age than Liverpool’s Rio Ngumoha, who found the net against Fulham on Saturday aged 17 years and 225 days.

Wayne Rooney (17y 51d vs Arsenal) and Cesc Fàbregas (17y 113d vs Blackburn Rovers)

5. Speaking of youngsters, Archie Gray (20y 31d) became the second-youngest Tottenham Hotspur player to make 50 appearances for the club in the Premier League. Who is the only player to have reached that milestone quicker for Spurs in the competition?

Aaron Lennon (20y 12d)

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Until next time,
Opta Analyst