This Saturday, early evening, the last two remaining unbeaten sides in the Premier League square up at the Etihad and though one is expected to win the league at a canter this season, and one is not, presently there is very little to separate them.
In winning four games apiece and drawing twice apiece, both teams have had 37 shots on target, but immediately here we veer from the parallels between Manchester City and Spurs. That’s because by acknowledging their heightened number of chances brings us to the one-man outlier that is Erling Haaland and his phenomenal stats to date.
The carnivorous Norwegian has been responsible for 15 of City’s 37 on-target strikes, and remarkably he has bagged ten of them, a figure that is accompanied by data that is truly off the scale. It’s a rate 40% greater than his xG and equates to a goal for every 13 touches he’s had. It’s a ratio of 1.86 goals-per-game to this point and as Adam Smith from Sky Sports pointed out this week, if Haaland continues at this pace he will finish his inaugural campaign in English football on 70 goals. Seventy.
Of course, he won’t score anything close to that, or at least let’s hope not because otherwise the universe will warp and nothing will make sense anymore, but potential record-breaking seasons isn’t Tottenham’s concern right now. Keeping Haaland at bay for ninety minutes is.
In this regard, their handling of Alexandar Mitrovic last weekend – another prolific striker with the look of a man who spends his Mondays to Fridays feasting on wild deer in woodland – is a worry, because for eighty-or-so minutes Christian Romero and company kept the scary Serb under wraps and then suddenly, in a flash of inspiration, he wasn’t anymore. Frankly, there was little Tottenham’s back-line could do either, getting three around him at close quarters within moments of Mitrovic receiving possession.
And ultimately, that is what it amounts to when assessing the terrifying Haaland and his rare ilk: an acceptance that opposition defences are to an extent helpless. That, for all the analysis and all the highlighting that Spurs have conceded one goal fewer than the Blues this term, at some point during proceedings this Saturday, the 22-year-old will get a goal-scoring opportunity, and two times out of three he will convert it.
Tottenham naturally have their own predator in the form of Harry Kane and it’s pertinent that he too is on proverbial fire right now, notching a goal every 87 minutes since opening his account at Stamford Bridge. But of far more interest, when viewing Antonio Conte’s attacking options is Son Heung-min who absolutely loves this fixture but is significantly less enamoured by 2022/23 so far.
The Korean forward has repeatedly been a thorn in City’s side in recent years, scoring seven and assisting three in 15 outings but it must now weigh heavy on his mind that the Golden Boot winner has yet to find the back of the net this term, a drought that consists of 493 minutes and over a hundred days.
Elsewhere, errant form from Son is also an issue but against Fulham it was misfortune rather than mistakes that extended his dry spell, with the crossbar rattled and VAR ruling out a looping effort and indeed these missed chances feeds into an aspect of Spurs that illustrates their best and worst side under Conte. Impressively, they racked up an attempt on Fulham’s goal every four minutes last Saturday, yet still ended up holding on at the death, nerves frayed with just a single goal advantage.
Perhaps if they crossed more, their numbers would improve. Tottenham have scored five headers this season, a league high. Incidentally, they have yet to score on the counter.
It was a header that settled matters last season, right at the end in a highly dramatic climax that saw Spurs leave with the points and when recalling previous encounters an oddity emerges in that games played at the Etihad tend to produce lots of goals whereas meetings in North London are low-scoring affairs. In the last decade, City v Spurs at the Etihad has averaged 4.3 goals per game.
There is a surprise too in discovering that the Blues have only lost once on home turf to Tottenham since Pep Guardiola’s arrival, a surprise because Spurs have become something of a bogey side in recent years; the domestic opposition that City arguably fear most, bar Liverpool.
So much of that fear is reserved for the striker they unsuccessfully bid a fortune for the summer before last, only now they possess a forward who is ripping up conventions and handing out nightmares one keeper at a time. And though there is an awful lot to be excited by ahead of this top-three clash – and an awful lot to be intrigued about – this prolific pair are a rare ilk. Ultimately it will likely come down to them.
Only two players in the top-flight have notched three match-winners going into September. There are no prizes for guessing who they are.
