Stat, Viz, Quiz is the Opta Analyst football newsletter. This week’s edition looks at Manchester City, the Premier League’s promoted teams, and shot monsters.
It has been rather a strange season up to this point.
After Matchday 9 in the Premier League, reigning champions Liverpool are on a four-game losing streak, Manchester United are good again, and Tottenham are resilient. We’re yet to see anyone wear hats on their feet or evidence of hamburgers eating people, but we’re sure it’s not far off in this wacky new upside-down world of English football.
Perhaps most shocking of all has been the encouraging start to the campaign from the three promoted clubs, after two seasons of relative hopelessness from new teams. In this week’s SVQ, we’ll analyse the starts made by Sunderland, Leeds United and Burnley.
Another odd aspect from 2025-26 is that we have a team with arguably the best goalscorer in the world who are struggling to score, or at least, everyone except him is struggling to score. We’ll look at whether Manchester City are too reliant on the goals of Erling Haaland.
This week’s Ask Opta question looks at shot monsters, while our quiz includes trying to remember Czech stars of the Premier League’s past.
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STAT – City’s Scoring Struggles
On the opening weekend of the 2025-26 Premier League season, Manchester City eased past Wolves 4-0 at Molineux, with Erling Haaland scoring twice, also aided by goals from new signings Tijjani Reijnders and Rayan Cherki. The indomitable City looked back and ready to go.
Haaland has kept scoring, with 11 in the Premier League already. However, after nine games, the only other source with more than one goal in the league for Man City is Burnley centre-back Maxime Estève, whose two own goals in the 5-1 win over the Clarets is more than other scorers Reijnders, Cherki, Phil Foden and Matheus Nunes (one each).
Man City PL top scorers 2025-26 After MD9
In fact, across all competitions, the only game City have scored in this season that Haaland didn’t (because he didn’t play) was the 2-0 win at Huddersfield Town in the EFL Cup third round.
Every other game in which City have found the net in 2025-26 has included Haaland doing so, while there haven’t been any other scorers in those games whose goals were crucial, i.e. if you took away goals not scored by Haaland, City still would have won.
Of course, you would always rather have Haaland in your team than not, but does this all point to Pep Guardiola perhaps being a bit too reliant on his gigantic Norwegian goal machine?
The only two Premier League games in which Haaland hasn’t found the net this season have been against Tottenham and on Sunday at Aston Villa, both of which City lost without scoring.
Being without Omar Marmoush through injury has obviously been a blow; the Egyptian has seven goals in 20 Premier League appearances for City since signing from Eintracht Frankfurt in January, but he is back now, coming off the bench at Villa Park at the weekend.
But while Haaland has 33 league goals since the start of last season, no other City player has more than eight (Foden), so this also isn’t a new phenomenon. Guardiola could really do with others stepping up and helping out their star striker, especially on days like Sunday, when things aren’t working for him.
Or just find a way to clone Haaland. With all the money in football these days we surely can’t be far away from that kind of technology, right?
VIZ – Promoted Promise
It was a very good weekend for the promoted sides.
Leeds United overcame West Ham on Friday, before Sunderland staged an impressive comeback at Chelsea on Saturday.
Burnley, famed for being defensive and low-scoring under Scott Parker, won a five-goal thriller at Wolves on Sunday to make it a clean sweep for the teams who came up from last season’s Championship on Matchday 9.
All three newly promoted clubs won on the same Premier League matchday for the first time since MD10 of the 2020-21 season.
Sunderland have been the most fascinating, sitting in fourth place and already amassing 17 points from nine games, the best performance at this stage from a promoted side since 2008-09 (take our quiz to find out who had more points that season).
Leeds (11 points) and Burnley (10 points) are still 15th and 16th respectively but have already hit double figures in points.
It is quite the turnaround when you consider we went into this season with people not only writing all three of them off, but basically suggesting the Premier League would forevermore see the three promoted teams all go down just because that happened to be the case in the last two campaigns.
Luton Town, Burnley and Sheffield United went straight back down in 2023-24, before Leicester City, Ipswich Town and Southampton did the same last season. Of those six teams, the most points were won by Luton (26), a total that Sunderland are already within nine points of with 29 games to play, and even Leeds and Burnley are almost halfway there not even a quarter of the way into the campaign.
As you can see from this week’s viz, though, it is interesting to see where they all sit in the team styles graphic, not noticeably far away from others who have struggled in the last two years. Perhaps the Premier League becoming more direct and set-piece heavy this season has helped.
Promoted teams styles since 2022-23 PL
This was also the first matchday since MD15 in 2015-16 that Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City all lost on the same weekend. Could we be seeing a changing of the guard at the top of English football where teams like Sunderland will overthrow City and Liverpool?
No, almost certainly not, but it makes for interesting viewing all the same.
QUIZ – Czech Mates, Seagull Subs, and Bees Throws
We use some of the best Opta facts from the weekend’s Premier League action to test your footy brain. Answers at the bottom of the page.
1. West Ham midfielder, Tomás Soucek, made his 200th Premier League appearance on Friday, becoming just the third Czech player to hit that milestone in the competition after who?
2. Sunderland’s 17 points from their opening nine Premier League games is the best return by a promoted club at this stage since which team managed 20 points in 2008-09?
3. Although they lost 4-2 at Manchester United on Saturday, Brighton scored another goal via a substitute when Charalampos Kostoulas found the net. How many goals from subs have the Seagulls scored in the Premier League this season?
4. Brentford scored from a throw-in against Liverpool and have now scored twice as many goals from throws as any other team in the Premier League since the start of last season. How many?
5. Eberechi Eze became the second player with the initials EE to score for Arsenal in the Premier League on Sunday, after who?
Popular Articles on Opta Analyst This Week
Ask Opta
This week’s question comes from Aleksandar Petrov, who asks: “After the 11 shots from [Jean-Philippe] Mateta against Bournemouth, did we see a new record in terms of shots taken from a player in a single Premier League match?”
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:
Thanks Aleksandar, great question. We wrote about Mateta after his impressive showing against Bournemouth, where we answered this very question, but we’ll go into more detail here.
It was not a new record for most shots by a player in a single Premier League game. There have been 19 occasions in total where someone has had exactly 11 shots in a match, and seven instances of someone having more than 11 shots. It was, though, the most we have seen since Mohamed Salah had 12 shots for Liverpool against Brighton in March 2024.
The record belongs jointly to Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo, who each managed 13 shots in a single game for Manchester United. Ronaldo did so first, against Reading in December 2006, while Rooney matched him in March 2010 against Fulham.
Apart from Robin van Persie’s 12 efforts for Arsenal vs Wolves in December 2011, the other occasions were also from Man Utd players: Rooney (12 vs Newcastle in March 2006), Ronaldo (12 vs Derby in March 2008) and Zlatan Ibrahimovic (12 vs Burnley in October 2016).
Most shots in a PL game
Quiz Answers
1. West Ham midfielder, Tomás Soucek, made his 200th Premier League appearance on Friday, becoming just the third Czech player to hit that milestone in the competition after who?
Petr Cech (443) and Patrik Berger (229)
2. Sunderland’s 17 points from their opening nine Premier League games is the best return by a promoted club at this stage since which team managed 20 points in 2008-09?
Hull City
3. Although they lost 4-2 at Manchester United on Saturday, Brighton scored another goal via a substitute when Charalampos Kostoulas found the net. How many goals from subs have the Seagulls scored in the Premier League this season?
Six (the most of any team)
4. Brentford scored from a throw-in against Liverpool and have now scored twice as many goals from throws as any other team in the Premier League since the start of last season. How many?
Eight
5. Eberechi Eze became the second player with the initials EE to score for Arsenal in the Premier League on Sunday, after who?
Emmanuel Eboue
Before You Go…
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