Why Man City’s draw with Tottenham still showed they could be stronger than ever

It was half-an-hour or so after Manchester City had dropped the first points of their Premier League title defence when the subject could eventually move away from VAR, the new handball regulations and Gabriel Jesus’ disallowed goal. Pep Guardiola was instead asked for his thoughts on his side’s finishing, given their 30 shots on goal compared to Tottenham Hotspur’s three. “Two shots,” he replied, amending Tottenham’s total. “The shot from Harry Kane is not a shot.”

Guardiola was striking out an audacious attempt by Kane from his own half which bounced harmlessly wide. It was an interesting answer, if only for revealing that he had been keeping count. He seemed to already know the game’s statistics and that they reflected his side’s dominance. Maybe that is why, despite a disappointing 2-2 draw, he had already hailed City’s performance as one of the best under his management.

Of course, City failed on ‘the only statistic that counts’. For the champions to drop points this early in the season offers hope of a genuine title race to their rivals and to neutrals alike, whereas a comfortable win would have suggested the procession that many have predicted. Maybe this was just the first City slip-up. Maybe this was a sign of things to come. But to both the naked eye and any spreadsheet botherer, Saturday was an extraordinarily one-sided affair, of the like we rarely see when two top Premier League teams meet.

Dominance over a top-six opponent is nothing unusual for City. Since Guardiola’s appointment, they have only been out-shot in league games against their immediate rivals twice. On both occasions, that team was Liverpool: in a 1-1 draw at the Etihad in 2016/17 and their 4-3 victory at Anfield the following season. Jurgen Klopp’s side tend to run City close on the shot counter every time they meet, but the rest of the top six can barely hold a candle to them.

Tottenham’s visits to the Etihad have proved particularly lopsided. Last season’s – the third part in their trilogy after the Champions League quarter-final tie – was a relatively close-run thing. But in Guardiola’s previous two seasons, City rolled Tottenham over. The 17 shots on goal in the 2017-18 meeting was their most in any Premier League game against a top-six club. Until Saturday, that is.

City’s 30 shots on Saturday was just short of double that previous Guardiola record in top-six meetings. It is also more than the champions managed against any Premier League side last season. Relegated Cardiff City and Huddersfield Town travelled to the Etihad and conceded fewer shots than Tottenham did at the weekend, allowing 25 and 24 on their respective visits. Even Chelsea, who were beaten 6-0 in Manchester earlier this year, only conceded 14.

At the other end of the pitch, we will ignore Guardiola’s advice and count Kane’s 70-yard Hail Mary as a genuine attempt on goal. Even then, the only top-six club to attempt fewer shots against City in the Guardiola era is Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United, with just two at the Etihad in 2016-17 and again in 2018-19. There were only eight games in total last season where City conceded fewer than three shots. Top-six teams tend to test them with at least six.

Does any of this really matter? Tottenham played for a point and got it. Pochettino may have been influenced by Mourinho’s approach at the Etihad in the past and this time, the tactic worked. City, meanwhile, still appear to suffer from strange lapses in concentration, the type which could strike again at any point this season and allow a title race to develop.

But the point is that if City dominate to the same extent in their remaining 36 league games, they will rarely fail to win. They simply should not have been so superior when up against a team that finished fourth last year, that is widely-regarded as the third-best in the division and who were Champions League runners-up, no less. But they were, so just how dominant will they be against almost every other team in the division?

Games at the Etihad over the past two years against the Premier League’s so-called ‘bottom 14’ have tended to follow a certain script. City would start on the front foot and quickly establish a comfortable lead. Occasionally, they would concede a sloppy goal, but more often than not the remainder of the game would be Guardiola’s fluid, flamboyant attack casually finding their way through their deep-set opponents and extending their lead.

Saturday did not follow that script at all, but it did share a similar energy and rhythm with many of those ‘bottom 14’ games, in a way that many of City’s matches against the so-called ‘top six’ previously haven’t. When the debate over Jesus’ disallowed goal eventually dies down and the disappointment with the draw ebbs away, that will reassure Guardiola that a third consecutive Premier League title remains very much on the cards.