Goals, assists, chances created, successful dribbles, there are plenty of statistics on which to judge how well an attacking player is performing. The more the better.

With defenders, centre-backs in particular, it’s not as simple. Ranking highly in certain metrics doesn’t mean a player is the best at defending, merely that they’re doing more of it.

At City, the man doing the most is Caleb Okoli. Per game, he makes more tackles, interceptions, clearances and blocks than any other of City’s three other senior centre-backs.

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There are explanations behind that. For a start, nearly all of Okoli’s Premier League appearances this season came under Steve Cooper, when City were broadly giving themselves more defending to do because they had less of the ball.

There are matters that can’t be judged by cold, hard numbers too. What if Okoli is having to do more defending because his initial positioning isn’t good enough?

That doesn’t seem overtly true from watching the Italian. What the eye test does reveal is that he is the best physically of City’s four centre-back options – the quickest and the strongest – and so perhaps that’s why he is able to do more.

But what the numbers also say, and this isn’t in his favour, is that he completes the lowest percentage of his passes of the quartet, and makes the most mistakes leading to shots. Still, a player is arguably only as good as their last game, and according to Ruud van Nistelrooy, Okoli was “excellent” against Manchester United in what was his first start under the Dutchman.

So what happens now? While Wout Faes and Jannik Vestergaard have been the preferred duo at the back in recent weeks, it doesn’t feel like they’re certainties to start in the same way it does for Mads Hermansen, Bilal El Khannouss and Jamie Vardy.

There’s not a clear best pairing. Survey City fans and you will get a wide range of opinions. In fact, many more are now saying Okoli is the man that should start. That there is no obvious answer as to who forms City's best centre-back partnership feels like it explains why they concede so many goals.

It’s now 20 games in all competitions that City have gone without a clean sheet. They’ve kept just one in the Premier League all season. It feels like that run can’t continue if they’re going to escape the bottom three.

So maybe Okoli, by doing the most defending, should be in the 11, on the basis that City naturally have a lot of defending to do. It will be mulled over by van Nistelrooy this week and, as it should be, how the centre-backs work with the rest of the team will be a consideration too. After all, City have to defend with 11 men.

Asked how he felt Okoli performed at Old Trafford, van Nistelrooy said: “Excellent. I thought the team defended as a unit and all the individual parts in how he wanted to press and how we wanted to defend certain phases was excellent in teamwork and in intensity and holding United far from our own box for a long period of the game.

“Of course we know with their quality that they’re going to create something. But also lower, we defended really well. The back-line and centre-backs were important in that.”

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