Stat attack.

Compared to American sports, the publication of stats for various things in football has been a relatively recent one. I've looked at the Actim Index a couple of times in the blog previously (where we do fairly well to be honest) but I've not taken much of a look at the more well know Opta stats before.
Cue a(nother) dull international break with not much news in the world of City apart from a 'bonding' trip to the Peak District - what happened to good old fashioned all dayers at the races like in days of yore? so I thought I'd take a look at the Opta stats to see if there was anything glaring that stood out (good or bad).

Team wise, it shows that our strikers dominate the goals scored whilst we concede as many from opposition midfielders as we do from strikers, although we have yet to concede from outside the area so far.
Goals scored are spread evenly across the whole ninety minutes with neither for or against showing any trends as regards getting quick off the mark or a penchance for conceding in the last minute.
There is also an even spread as far as how we concede - equal measure for left foot, right foot and headers, wheras we have scored over two-thirds right-footed and are yet to score a header (although unconfirmed stats show Sibierski has now attemted 107 headers without success).
Before you cry 'shoot' when we are next fannying around with the ball on the edge of the box, remember that we rank second in the Premiership with 134 shots and first with a cross success rate of 30%.
We also top the yellow card table with twenty-two so far, second in tackles made (403) and sixth in fouls committed (167) so it appears that we are following a mantra of 'getting stuck in'.

For individual players, it does tell one main story here in that they show how much of an influence Joey Barton is having this season. Barton leads the team both with fouls for (18) and against (23) with somewhat suprisingly Darius Vassell and Andrew Cole slightly behind in the fouls conceded chart. Interestingly, Danny Mills has had almost as many fouls against him (13) than conceded (15) - must be something in this winding up the opposition lark! Barton has also completed the most passes, crosses and leads the team by some distance in tackles made, with Claudio Reyna second in the passes and tackling categories.
Cole and Vassell unsuprisingly lead the way in shots on goal, and perhaps even more unsuprising is Musampa's woeful 33% shot accuracy total.

The one thing that stood out for me was the impact that Barton is having on the team this season following his summer troubles. There have been rumours he may feature in the England set-up at some stage but I think the World Cup 2006 could come a year or two early for him.
Anyway, if they did nothing else at least you can turn to the person sat next to you when Musampa next blazes one over and moan 'that's 30.7888%' shot accuracy for that **** now'.