Man City boss Pep Guardiola's rant about football's statistics obsession | OneFootball

Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City have a massive few months ahead of them after they left the door ever so slightly ajar for Liverpool in the Premier League title race.

They edged passed Everton in a close-run affair at Goodison Park on the weekend and the Spanish gaffer will be hoping the next few weeks are far more comfortable.

However, they are all but through to the quarter-finals of the Champions league having helped themselves to five brilliant goals at Sporting Lisbon in their last 16 first leg.

Guardiola himself stating that Liverpool may be the only ones who could stop them.

Guardiola spent big in the summer to reinforce his ranks but, on paper, the marquee signing of Jack Grealish hasn’t necessarily panned out.

City coughed up an eye-watering £100 million to land Grealish and, while he might not have set the world alight in sky blue, Guardiola is insistent that statistics don’t tell the full story.

“Always we talk about the statistics – the players today play for the statistics but this is the biggest mistake they can do,” he said.

“We’re involved in that. Statistics are just a bit of information that we have but there are players that make the team play good and they are not into statistics. But the players say how many goals I score or how many assists or…

“With these kinds of situation, they forget everything. Statistics never existed before. It’s how you play today if you perform to your maximum, to your best, help your teammates to make the process defensively and offensively better – it’s enough. Thanks to that we are going to win.

“Everyone has agents and managers and everything and say what they have to do better and they listen to a lot of things about what they have to do.

“He’s playing good. I would tell him – I wouldn’t tell you – if he’s not playing good, but that’s not the case.”

He’s not wrong, is he? We live in a world absolutely saturated with statistics and they are often the biggest stick with which we use to bash certain players.

Just look at the likes of Liverpool’s Fabinho or Chelsea’s N’Golo Kante – the ‘highlight’ statistics would never come anywhere close to outlining just how valuable they are to their respective teams.

Ultimately, they just don’t tell the full story and it seems Guardiola is fed up with the stats obsessed nature of modern football.