Messi’s first in 753, Liverpool’s surprising 1.6%, De Bruyne hits 100 — the

Another superb weekend of football and By The Numbers is here to sift through it all. In Spain, Athletic Bilbao lifted the Supercopa de Espana, beating Barcelona in a thriller that saw something unique from Lionel Messi (more on that later). In England, Manchester United and Liverpool cancelled each other out, Manchester City swatted aside Crystal Palace, while Leicester City and Tottenham Hotspur both eased to wins. In Italy, the big matches of the weekend saw Inter Milan beat Juventus and Lazio beat Roma, while Napoli thrashed Fiorentina. Over in Germany, Bayern Munich won, while the chasing pack all dropped points — Bayer Leverkusen lost to Union Berlin (who are now 5th, incidentally), RB Leipzig drew with Wolfsburg and Borussia Dortmund drew with second-from-bottom Mainz.

Here then, are the best stats from the weekend’s action.

Premier League

1.6%

Since scoring with seven of their 14 shots against Crystal Palace (50%), Liverpool have scored just one goal from 62 shots in their last four PL games, a conversion rate of 1.6%.

2

This is a weird, rather unwanted record one. Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Fabio Silva is the youngest player (18 years, 181 days) ever to lose both of the first two PL matches in which he has scored (lost 2-3 to West Brom, 1-2 to Burnley).

3

Following on from that conversion stat, Liverpool have failed to score in three straight PL matches, becoming only the third different reigning PL champion to do so after Arsenal in 1998-99 & Leicester in 2016-17. It’s the first time Liverpool have gone goalless in three straight league matches since March 2005.

20

Harry Kane has become the 18th different player to score 20 PL goals from outside the box, with his goal against Sheffield United equaling the number of such goals that Cristiano Ronaldo and Gianfranco Zola scored in the PL.

100

With that glorious outside-of-the-boot cross to John Stones, Kevin De Bruyne has now assisted 100 goals in all competitions for Manchester City. That is 31 more than any other PL player since his debut for City.

It was, in fact, De Bruyne’s 75th PL assist for Manchester City and 76th overall, moving him level with Teddy Sheringham for 10th most all-time in the PL. The only active PL player with more assists than De Bruyne is James Milner (8th, 85)

200

The Manchester United match was Jurgen Klopp’s 200th PL game in charge of Liverpool. Only Jose Mourinho has won more in his first 200 PL games (137) than Klopp (127).

Supercopa De Espana

1

Marcelino García Toral is the first manager in history to win two consecutive one-legged finals against Barcelona (in all competitions). He led Athletic Club to victory this Supercopa and Valencia to victory in the 2019 Copa del Rey.

It must be noted, though,…