Erling Haaland and Mohamed Salah have Premier League records in sight ahead of Sunday’s headline meeting between two title hopefuls. We look ahead to the game at the Etihad Stadium with our Man City vs Liverpool prediction.
Man City vs Liverpool: The Key Stats
The Opta supercomputer is backing Manchester City, who won 45.4% of the 10,000 pre-match simulations.
Erling Haaland only needs to score twice to reach 100 Premier League goals, becoming the quickest to hit that landmark in the competition’s history.
Mohamed Salah is one goal or assist away from breaking Wayne Rooney’s record for the most Premier League goal involvements at a single club.
It is often said that the Premier League table only truly starts to take shape after 10 matchdays.
While Manchester City and Liverpool are very much in the title picture with 10 games played, sitting second and third in the table, they are six and seven points adrift of Arsenal, respectively.
At the time of writing, Mikel Arteta’s Gunners are assigned a 71.0% chance of winning their first Premier League title since ‘The Invincibles’ of 2003-04, with City at 13.6% and Liverpool at 10.1%.
Pep Guardiola and Arne Slot face off at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday, with both managers knowing there is little margin for error, given Arsenal’s relentless form in the season’s opening weeks.
But statistically, City have been the Premier League’s best side since the start of April. In that timeframe, they have taken the most points in the competition (42), winning 13 of 19 games (three draws, three losses), while they have won nine of their 10 matches at the Etihad (one loss).
They earned an impressive 3-1 victory over high-flying Bournemouth last week, before registering an even more eye-catching 4-1 triumph over Borussia Dortmund in the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday.
Erling Haaland scored twice against the Cherries before getting on the scoresheet once again versus Dortmund, and he could make Premier League history on Sunday.
The Norwegian’s brace last weekend took him to 98 goals in 107 Premier League appearances, and he is set to obliterate the record for the fewest games needed to reach a century of goals in the competition, currently held by Alan Shearer (124 matches).
Erling Haaland 98 Premier League Goals
Haaland is arguably in the form of his life in 2025-26.
He has scored 18 goals in 14 appearances for City in all competitions since the end of the FIFA Club World Cup, and in the Premier League, he leads the way for almost every attacking metric.
Haaland is top for goals (13), expected goals (10.25 xG), shots (43) and shots on target (25) this term, averaging a goal every 66 minutes while scoring from 30.2% of his shots and 52.4% of his big chances (11/21).
There was talk of City being overly reliant on the Norwegian recently, but members of their supporting cast have since stepped up.
Going into Matchday 11, only five players have created 20 or more chances in the Premier League this season, with Phil Foden and Jérémy Doku (both 20) among them.
Doku (3.3) and Foden (2.9) are both enjoying their best seasons for chances created per 90 minutes in the Premier League (minimum 250 mins played).
Haaland is not the only player who could claim a major Premier League record on Sunday.
Mohamed Salah opened the scoring for Liverpool in last week’s 2-0 victory over Aston Villa, a result that snapped a four-game losing streak in the Premier League.
That strike took him to 276 Premier League goal involvements for Liverpool (188 goals, 88 assists), tying Wayne Rooney’s single-club record for Manchester United (183 goals, 93 assists).
Mo Salah's Premier League Goal Involvements for Liverpool
Salah’s next goal or assist will see him claim the record outright, and he has more goal involvements (nine goals, six assists) against Manchester City in the Premier League than any other player.
Liverpool followed up their victory over Villa with an impressive 1-0 win over Real Madrid in the Champions League, with Alexis Mac Allister scoring.
However, the Reds have lost their last three away games in the Premier League, and they could lose four in succession on the road for the first time since April 2012, under Kenny Dalglish.
Slot has repeatedly referenced Liverpool’s struggles when defending long balls this season so might facing Guardiola and his patient, possession-based approach benefit the Reds?
City’s 60 build-up attacks in the Premier League this season is almost double the tally achieved by their closest competitors, Arsenal (36), and Guardiola’s men also lead the way for sequences containing 10 passes or more, with 174.
Only Chelsea, West Ham and Wolves move the ball upfield with a slower direct speed than City, who progress 1.66 metres per second. Liverpool have the second-quickest direct speed, and the two most recent teams to beat them – Crystal Palace (albeit in the EFL Cup vs a much-changed Reds side) and Brentford – are first and third, respectively.
City are also the only team yet to score a Premier League goal via a set-piece this season, with all 20 of their goals coming from open play. They are the first side in Premier League history to score as many as 20 goals in their first 10 games of a campaign without any of them being from a dead-ball situation.
This match will be Guardiola’s 1,000th as a manager since taking the Barcelona B job back in June 2007. Across his 999 games to date, he’s won 715 (71.6%), with 549 of those matches coming as Man City boss (70.5% win rate at the club).
Man City vs Liverpool Head-to-Head
Man City lost both of their Premier League meetings with Liverpool last season by a 2-0 scoreline.
Only against Manchester United in 2020 has Guardiola ever seen one of his teams go three straight games without a goal against a particular side (in all competitions).
That is as many defeats as they suffered in their previous 12 games against the Reds (four wins, six draws), and they last lost more consecutively against them between March 2015 and December 2016 (four).
Liverpool could now win consecutive away games against City for the first time since a run of three between 1987 and 1991 at Maine Road.
But City have won 10 of their last 12 Premier League games against reigning champions (one draw, one defeat), most recently a 4-1 victory over Liverpool at Anfield in February 2021.
Man City vs Liverpool Prediction
The Opta supercomputer is siding with City ahead of Sunday’s game.
City won 45.4% of the supercomputer’s 10,000 pre-match simulations, with 27.7% going Liverpool’s way and the remaining 26.9% finishing all square.
While the supercomputer may back City quite comfortably here, it does at least give the Reds more than a 50% chance of taking at least a point home.
Man City vs Liverpool Prediction Opta Supercomputer
The supercomputer also fancies City to finish above Liverpool in the season predictions. City finish second in 30.8% of projections – their most common position.
Second is also considered Liverpool’s likeliest position, though their chances of being runners-up are rated at 26.8%.
Man City vs Liverpool Predicted Lineups
Manchester City: Gianluigi Donnarumma, Matheus Nunes, Rúben Dias, Josko Gvardiol, Nico O’Reilly, Bernardo Silva, Nico González, Phil Foden, Rayan Cherki, Jérémy Doku, Erling Haaland.
Head coach: Pep Guardiola
Liverpool: Giorgi Mamardashvili, Conor Bradley, Ibrahima Konaté, Virgil van Dijk, Andy Robertson, Ryan Gravenberch, Alexis Mac Allister, Mohamed Salah, Dominik Szoboszlai, Cody Gakpo, Hugo Ekitiké.
Head coach: Arne Slot
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 15,000 domestic football teams. This score is on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off this weekend, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Premier League Stats Opta
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