Stat, Viz, Quiz is the Opta Analyst football newsletter. This week’s edition looks at Pep Guardiola, this season’s Premier League, and Mohamed Salah.
Manchester City’s 1-0 win at Brentford on Sunday meant they went up to fifth in the Premier League table, so it wasn’t exactly a monumental occasion for a team who won four titles in a row fairly recently.
However, it was a big moment for manager Pep Guardiola, as it was his 250th victory in England’s top flight, making him the fastest to reach that figure with a single club by some distance. We’ll look further into that achievement in this week’s SVQ.
We have been banging the drum about the competitiveness of this season’s Premier League for weeks, and have a few viz examples that will further show how the league’s strength in depth means, technically, most teams have made a worse start to the season than usual… if that makes sense. We’ll try to make sense of it anyway.
Our quiz looks back at Matchday 7 in the Premier League, while this week’s Ask Opta question is all about Mohamed Salah.
We begin by looking at the manager who has largely dominated English football since arriving in 2016…
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STAT – 250 Up for Pep
Most people probably thought Manchester City were going to beat Brentford on Sunday.
If anything, many will have probably been surprised they only did so by a 1-0 scoreline, with the inevitable Erling Haaland scoring the only goal of the game. Keith Andrews’ side fought valiantly, especially in the second half, but ultimately Haaland was yet again the difference.
Incidentally, Haaland has scored 94 Premier League goals in 104 games under Pep Guardiola, already the 10th most goals scored by a player for a manager in the competition’s history.
However, for a change, it’s not the goal-obsessed Norwegian we’re discussing today.
The victory was Guardiola’s 250th in the Premier League, reaching the landmark after just 349 matches with Manchester City (D50 L49). It is the fastest any manager has ever reached 250 wins in charge of a single English top-flight club, and by some margin.
The Spaniard has beaten the previous record held by Arsène Wenger, who earned 250 Premier League wins at Arsenal in 423 games. Guardiola did so in 74 fewer games.
Unsurprisingly, Sir Alex Ferguson is next on the list, having reached 250 victories in England’s top flight in 477 games with Manchester United, ahead of George Ramsay (remember him, kids?), who did so at Aston Villa in 480 games at the start of a barely believable 40-year spell as manager there that ran from 1886 to 1926.
Liverpool’s legendary boss Bill Shankly is now in fifth place, having won 250 English top-flight games in 483 attempts with the Reds.
Fastest to 250 English top flight wins as manager
Other notable figures to reach 250 top-flight wins with one club include Sir Matt Busby at Man Utd (489 games), Bill Nicholson at Tottenham (523 games) and Brian Clough with Nottingham Forest (536 games).
Guardiola still has this season and next remaining on his Man City contract, so we can expect plenty more wins to follow.
Whether he will be able to add a seventh Premier League title before his eventual departure remains to be seen, but he will undoubtedly go down as one of the best managers in English football history whenever that time comes.
VIZ – Why is Almost Everyone Underperforming?
OK, that title is a little misleading, but there is a curious bit of data we found after the weekend’s Premier League action.
Of the 17 teams to have participated in England’s top flight both last season and this season, only six have more points in 2025-26 than they did after seven games in 2024-25.
Premier League points after 7 matchdays 2025-26
Not only that, but one of those six is Wolves, who only have two points and sit bottom of the table, but they did only have one point after Matchday 7 last season. That’s twice as many, and they ended 2024-25 with 42 points, which presumably means they’ll finish on 84 this season… maybe don’t bet on it, though.
Perhaps more remarkably, just three teams currently have a better non-penalty xG than they did at this stage last season. Only Crystal Palace (+4.7), Everton (+2.1) and Manchester United (+0.6) have recorded more non-pen xG after seven games than they did at the same point in their last campaign.
Even the teams currently in the top five have all recorded less xG than they managed to after seven games in 2024-25.
Arsenal are top of the league, but their total xG of 10.64 is 2.5 worse than at this stage last season (13.09), while Liverpool’s 10.27 is 3.0 worse (13.24).
Tottenham are third under Thomas Frank but despite having a disastrous league campaign in 2024-25, they did have almost twice as much xG by this point (15.03 to 7.53), while as impressive as Bournemouth’s start to the season has been, their xG of 7.64 is 3.8 less than it was after seven games in 2024-25 (11.44).
Erling Haaland may be causing all sorts of chaos in attack for Man City, but their collective xG of 12.21 is slightly less than it was last season by 0.9 xG (13.16).
Premier League non-pen xG after 7 matchdays 2025-26
But that doesn’t mean they’re all playing worse, especially when you consider that two of the three teams to improve on their xG this season (Palace and Everton) had two of the three lowest xG totals at this stage last season, so it wasn’t going to take much for them to do better.
We’re just seeing fewer chances across the board, with Premier League games averaging 23.3 shots and 2.57 xG per game after MD7. At the same stage last season, there had been an average of 26.8 shots and 2.96 xG per game.
This essentially looks to be the result of what is an increasingly competitive Premier League. Almost everyone is finding it harder to create big chances against each other, which could also be due to the general increase in direct play we recently looked at.
There is also the fact that the three newly-promoted clubs are all doing better than their equivalent at this stage last season, with a combined 23 points after seven games, up from just 11 points last season. Their collective xG for is very slightly down by 0.2, but their xG against is much better (27.5, down from 43.1).
Promoted clubs doing better in 2025-26
We’ll be taking a bigger look at this on the Opta Analyst site soon, so keep your eyes peeled across our social media channels for that.
QUIZ – Saka’s Success, Young Seagulls, and Magnificent Moyes
We have another selection of data-led questions for you to figure out. Answers at the bottom of the page.
1. Bukayo Saka’s penalty against West Ham was his 100th Premier League goal involvement for Arsenal. Of those, how many have been goals?
2. Aged 18 years, 163 days, Estêvão’s winner for Chelsea against Liverpool made him the second youngest Brazilian to score in the Premier League, after who?
3. Brighton have given 22 starts to players aged 21 or younger in the Premier League this season; the joint-most of any side, along with who?
4. Nick Woltemade became only the third player to score in each of his first three home Premier League appearances for Newcastle. Name either of the other two.
5. Since David Moyes’ first game back in charge of Everton in January, how many teams have won more points in the Premier League than the Toffees (42)?
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Ask Opta
This week’s question comes from Neil G, who asks: “What is Mo Salah’s record in 2025? It feels like he had a great first half of last season but hasn’t actually done as well since the turn of the year.”
Do you have a stat-based question you’d like Opta to answer in a future edition of SVQ? Email us at editors@theanalyst.com or message us on X @OptaAnalyst with #AskOpta and we’ll pick the best one.
Answer:
Salah has done pretty well in 2025, scoring 17 goals in 36 games in all competitions at club level, as well as recording nine assists.
His form did dip a bit towards the end of the campaign, though, scoring just twice in his last 11 games of 2024-25, with just one assist. Salah has three goals and three assists in 10 games this season, but hasn’t scored in any of his last four appearances.
It’s also notable that he has only scored four non-penalty goals in his last 24 games in all competitions for Liverpool.
Mohamed Salah xG last 24 games
This is Mohamed Salah, though, and form is temporary and all that.
Quiz Answers
1. Bukayo Saka’s penalty against West Ham was his 100th Premier League goal involvement for Arsenal. Of those, how many have been goals?
55, with 45 assists
2. Aged 18 years, 163 days, Estêvão’s winner for Chelsea against Liverpool made him the second youngest Brazilian to score in the Premier League, after who?
Rafael for Manchester United in November 2008 (18y 122d)
3. Brighton have given 22 starts to players aged 21 or younger in the Premier League this season; the joint-most of any side, along with who?
Sunderland
4. Nick Woltemade became only the third player to score in each of his first three home Premier League appearances for Newcastle. Name either of the other two.
Les Ferdinand in 1995 and Alan Shearer in 1996
5. Since David Moyes’ first game back in charge of Everton in January, how many teams have won more points in the Premier League than the Toffees (42)?
Six
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