Stat, Viz, Quiz is the Opta Analyst football newsletter. This week’s edition looks at Tottenham, Coventry City, and young goalscorers.
The Premier League continues to show why conclusions should never be made too early.
After starting the 2025-26 season with defeat last week, Burnley, Brentford, Bournemouth and Everton all won on Matchday 2, while Manchester City and Leeds followed up opening wins with defeats.
Chelsea went from toothless to ruthless, putting their 0-0 home draw against Crystal Palace on MD 1 behind them with a 5-1 mauling of West Ham, while Liverpool’s dramatic 3-2 win at Newcastle United had everything but predictability.
In this week’s SVQ, we’ll look at arguably the biggest result of the weekend as Tottenham won at Man City, again, while we’ll also dip into the Championship to find out what on earth has gotten into Coventry City in the last couple of weeks.
Our quiz covers this weekend’s Premier League action, while we have an Ask Opta question about lengthy goal droughts.
Let’s begin with another impressive showing from Spurs.
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Both Manchester City and Tottenham made strong starts to 2025-26.
City thrashed Wolves at Molineux last week, while Spurs eased to victory at home to Burnley. It set up their clash at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday nicely.
Thomas Frank’s side had already shown that they could cause issues for a top team when they gave European champions Paris Saint-Germain a real scare in the UEFA Super Cup earlier this month.
Spurs were associated with being too easy to play against under Ange Postecoglou last season, but they look anything but now as City struggled to find a way through them.
Goals from Brennan Johnson and João Palhinha ultimately gave the visitors a 2-0 victory, stopping talk of City being ‘back’ in its tracks, and starting to get tongues wagging about what Spurs could be capable of this season.
It was far from a freak result, though. Tottenham won the same fixture 4-0 last season, and have an impressive record compared to others when it comes to taking on Man City in recent years, as does Frank.
The Dane also won at the Etihad with Brentford in November 2022, with Saturday’s success making Frank only the third manager to beat a Pep Guardiola team away from home in the league with two different clubs, after José Mourinho (Real Madrid & Man Utd) and Antonio Conte (Chelsea & Tottenham).
This was also only the third time in his managerial career that Guardiola has lost his opening home league game of a season, after 2010-11 with Barcelona (vs Hércules) and 2020-21 with Man City (vs Leicester City).
Tottenham’s next seven league games are against teams who all lost at least one of their first two matches, so there’s every reason to think Frank could make an even more impressive start to life at the club.
Then again, Postecoglou started off at Spurs with eight wins and two draws from his first 10 games, so who knows?
VIZ – Efficient Coventry
You know that feeling when your team creates chance after chance and the ball just won’t go in. You start to wonder what new and inventive ways they will find to not score the next time.
Well, Coventry City don’t have a clue what that feels like as they’ve decided to do the opposite in the last two weeks.
After scoring five at Derby County last weekend, Frank Lampard’s side blasted seven past a hapless Queens Park Rangers on Saturday, aptly celebrating the news that the club had completed the purchase of their home ground, the Coventry Building Society Arena.
The Sky Blues’ seven goals came from 19 shots, and an overall expected goals total (xG) of just 1.27. That’s an overperformance of 5.73.
On record (since 2016-17), the only bigger examples of overperformance against xG from a team in one game in the top four divisions in England are Mansfield Town’s 9-2 win over Harrogate Town in League Two in February 2024 (2.96 xG, overperformance of 6.04) and Wigan Athletic’s 8-0 victory over Hull City in the Championship in July 2020 (2.03 xG, overperformance of 5.97).
From the point when they scored their third of five goals at Derby (including added time), Coventry have scored 10 goals in their last 124 minutes of football, coming from just 23 shots.
This was also the first time since September 1935 that Coventry have scored 5+ goals in back-to-back league games.
Perhaps it isn’t all that surprising. After all, their manager is the seventh highest scorer in Premier League history.
QUIZ – Spurs Success, Ndoye ‘Nvolvements, and Bruno’s Blast
We’ve posed five questions related to the weekend’s Premier League action. Answers at the bottom of the page.
1. Tottenham Hotspur are only the second side to win away to a Pep Guardiola managed team in back-to-back league seasons, after which team achieved the feat in 2019-20 and 2020-21?
2. Arsenal’s Max Dowman (15y 235d) became just the third player to appear in a Premier League game before turning 16 years old. Who are the other two?
3. Dan Ndoye became the first Nottingham Forest player to score or assist in both of his first two Premier League games for the club since who did so back in August 1998?
4. Iliman Ndiaye was the first player to score a Premier League goal at Hill Dickinson Stadium, but which Everton player scored the last goal at Goodison Park before the men’s team moved to their new home?
5. Who is the only player to have missed more penalties for Manchester United in Premier League history than Bruno Fernandes (five)?nal have now won 71 Premier League games with Martin Ødegaard starting the game as captain (D20 L15), level with Patrick Vieira. Who is the only former Gunners skipper to have led them to more victories in the competition?
Ask Opta
This week’s question comes from Chris M, who asks: “Where does Rio Ngumoha rank in the Premier League’s youngest ever goalscorers?”
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:
Rio Ngumoha’s dramatic 100th-minute winner for Liverpool at Newcastle on Monday saw him become the fourth-youngest player to score in the Premier League.
At 16 years and 361 days old, Ngumoha was just one day older than Wayne Rooney when he famously scored for Everton against Arsenal at Goodison Park in October 2002.
The record remains with another former Everton youngster, James Vaughan, who scored for the Toffees against Crystal Palace in April 2005 at 16 years and 270 days old, ahead of James Milner’s goal for Leeds United against Sunderland in December 2002 (16y 356d).
Arsenal’s Max Dowman, who is still only 15 and made his Premier League debut on Saturday, therefore has plenty of time to break the record should he be given enough opportunity to do so by Mikel Arteta this season.
You can read all about the Premier League’s youngest scorers here.
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1. Tottenham Hotspur are only the second side to win away to a Pep Guardiola managed team in back-to-back league seasons, after which team achieved the feat in 2019-20 and 2020-21?
Manchester United
2. Arsenal’s Max Dowman (15y 235d) became just the third player to appear in a Premier League game before turning 16 years old. Who are the other two?
Ethan Nwaneri vs Brentford in September 2022 (15y 181d) and Jeremy Monga for Leicester City vs Newcastle United in April (15y 271d)
3. Dan Ndoye became the first Nottingham Forest player to score or assist in both of his first two Premier League games for the club since who did so back in August 1998?
Geoff Thomas
4. Iliman Ndiaye was the first player to score a Premier League goal at Hill Dickinson Stadium, but which Everton player scored the last goal at Goodison Park before the men’s team moved to their new home?
Also Iliman Ndiaye
5. Who is the only player to have missed more penalties for Manchester United in Premier League history than Bruno Fernandes (five)?
Wayne Rooney (eight)
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