The latest round of Premier League action saw Manchester City’s march towards the league title continue, while Everton beat Liverpool in the Merseyside derby for the first time in more than a decade.
West Ham strengthened their chances of reaching Europe after moving into the Champions League places following victory over an out-of-sorts Spurs, whilst Fulham took a huge step closer towards safety after securing a second win within a week.
For now, we’ve got enough time to quickly reflect on some of the mouth-watering stats from the weekend’s action via OPTA stats.
• 2004 – Raphinha is the eighth different player to score directly from a free-kick for Leeds in the Premier League, and the first since Stephen McPhail against Manchester City in March 2004.
• 18 – Patrick Bamford has been directly involved in 18 Premier League goals this season, scoring 13 and assisting five more. The only Englishman with more goal involvements is Harry Kane (24).
• 32 – Crystal Palace have accrued their joint-best tally of points in a Premier League season after 25 games (32 pts), matching their haul at this stage in 2015/16.
• 8 – Brighton have never won a Premier League game on a Monday (D6 L2) – only Hull City (10) have played more games on this day of the week without ever winning in the competition’s history.
• 53 – Manchester United have scored 53 goals in 25 games in the Premier League this term – their most at this stage of a top-flight campaign since the 2012-13 season (60), which was the last time they won the title.
• 11 – Since his Premier League debut in February 2020, Bruno Fernandes (11) has himself scored more goals from the penalty spot than any other team besides Man Utd in the competition (Chelsea and Leicester, 9).
• 1 – Newcastle have won just one of their last 35 away league games against Manchester United (D9 L25), with that lone victory coming back in December 2013.
• 4 – Arsenal have lost their last four Premier League games against Manchester City without scoring a goal. This is the first time in their history they have failed to score in four consecutive home league games against an opponent.
• 11 – Manchester City have equalled the record for consecutive away wins by an English top-flight team across all competitions (11), which was previously set by Pep Guardiola’s side between May and November 2017.
• 0.9 – Under Dean Smith, Aston Villa have averaged 1.5 points-per-game in league competition when Jack Grealish has featured compared to 0.9 points-per-game without him, losing all three Premier League matches without the Englishman since the start of last season.
• 13 – Only Jamie Vardy (14) has scored more goals for Leicester this season than Harvey Barnes (13), who has now had a direct hand in nine goals in his last 11 Premier League matches (6 goals, 3 assists).
• 11 & 8 – Since his Premier League debut in August 2018, James Maddison has scored more goals from outside the area than any other player (11) – indeed, this was his eighth goal of the season, his best scoring campaign in the top-flight.
• 4 – West Ham will spend a night within the top four places in a top-flight campaign after at least 25 matches have been played for the first time since 1985-86 finishing third that season.
• 2 – Lucas Moura has scored in back-to-back appearances for Tottenham in all competitions for the first time since August 2018.
• 42 – All 42 of Michail Antonio’s Premier League goals have come from inside the box – in the competition’s history, only Tim Cahill (56), Chicharito (53), and Gabriel Jesus (45) have scored more with all of them coming from inside the box.