Premier League: why Sunday’s scorelines don’t tell it all

Manchester City opened a three-point lead at the top of the Premier League on Sunday 11 October, beating Liverpool 3–0 at Anfield after Ryan Gravenberch’s dismissal. Elsewhere, Crystal Palace turned an early deficit into a 3–1 win over Nottingham Forest, and Hull City recovered to draw 2–2 with Everton.

The common thread wasn’t dominance. It was the ability to change a match: a substitute returning from injury, a stand-in goalkeeper refusing to concede again and a promotion-winning player delivering from the bench. Our take: the table rewards the outcome, but understanding this Sunday means looking at who altered the odds.

What happened

Start at Selhurst Park, where Forest had enough opportunities to make the afternoon deeply uncomfortable for Palace. Dan Ndoye scored in the third minute, and the visitors registered 16 shots before half-time. Their first-half expected goals total was 2.18, yet they went into the interval behind.

Walter Benitez supplied the crucial intervention. Deputising for injured Palace captain Dean Henderson, he stopped Liam Delap from close range after Morgan Gibbs-White’s deflected effort came back off the crossbar. Palace were still trailing at that point; conceding again would have left them chasing a two-goal deficit.

Instead, Palace overturned the lead before the break and scored their third afterwards. Benitez made further saves as Pierre Sage secured his first home league victory as Palace manager. The result also carried a small but meaningful table swing: Palace finished the day two places and two points above Forest.

At Anfield, the decisive change was numerical. Gravenberch’s second booking arrived in the 62nd minute with the match goalless. City scored two minutes and 37 seconds later, and 11 of their 15 attempts came against Liverpool’s remaining ten players. That split matters more than any sweeping claim that Liverpool were comprehensively outplayed throughout.

Jeremy Doku was central to City’s breakthrough. Nine minutes after coming on, his deflected shot reached Erling Haaland, who scored the opener. Three minutes later, Doku curled in a goal himself. In 34 minutes, the winger recorded five dribbles, two chances created and two shots: a substantial contribution from a player making only his second league appearance of the campaign.

Hull’s draw followed a different pattern. They led Everton, fell behind and then recovered through substitute Mohamed Belloumi’s late equaliser. Coming after their first league defeat before the international break, the point offered an immediate response rather than allowing that setback to become a losing sequence.

The background

City’s victory preserved Enzo Maresca’s perfect winning record and ended Andoni Iraola’s unbeaten start at Liverpool in his seventh match. It was also Liverpool’s first home Premier League defeat since City won at Anfield in February. An imposing result, then, but not an unprecedented breach of the ground.

The final goal offered evidence of City’s collective quality beyond the advantage of an extra player. Rayan Cherki finished a sequence of 41 passes involving every City player, cutting inside before scoring. We rate that detail because it shows a different route to goal from Doku’s direct running: patient circulation followed by an individual action.

Haaland, meanwhile, has scored eight times across City’s past six matches in all competitions, finding the net in each. His appearance has attracted its own attention, as explored in our take on Erling Haaland’s dramatic short haircut, but the footballing story is his sustained scoring run. Crucially, that six-match sequence is not a league-only statistic.

For Forest manager Oliver Glasner, the Palace defeat came on a return to the club he had led to three trophies in three years. The uncomfortable distinction was statistical as well as personal. Opta’s records, beginning in 2010–11, show only one team creating more big chances in a Premier League defeat: Blackburn, with nine against Newcastle in February 2012. Forest made eight here.

Those numbers need interpreting properly. Expected goals estimates the quality of shooting opportunities; it does not award a team goals it ought to receive. Likewise, a big-chance count describes opportunity rather than execution. Forest’s figures support the argument that they threatened repeatedly, not that Palace’s win somehow counts less.

Hull provide the strongest argument for continuity. Despite 18 summer signings, six of their eight league goals have come from players who helped win promotion through last season’s Championship play-offs. Belloumi’s three goals and two assists account for involvement in roughly 63 per cent of that total. New arrivals have not made the existing squad redundant.