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By Sportingintelligence
20 March 2011
Manchester City’s reliance on Carlos Tevez for goals is well known and obvious. They often thrive when the Argentinean is playing well and netting – and they struggle without him.
It happened again on Sunday when City met Chelsea, minus Tevez, and lost 2-0.
But how much do they rely on him, precisely?
An analysis of the 20 Premier League teams and their scorers this season shows that City are 40 per cent reliant on Tevez for their goals in the league, ie: he has scored 18 of their 45 goals to this point.
Without Tevez, City would have only 60 per cent of their goals.
Some other trivia about Tevez’s contribution to City this season:
- City haven’t lost any match, in any competition, in which Tevez has scored.
- Tevez’s 18 league goals have come in 11 separate games. City have won 10 of those, and drew the other (2-2 at Birmingham).
- Tevez has scored the winner (or first goal in a victory to nil) in wins against Wigan, Chelsea, Bolton, Newcastle, Wolves and West Brom.
City’s next most prolific striker to date is Mario Balotelli, with just six league goals.
No other team is close to relying on one player as much as City are reliant on Tevez, as the table below shows.
Manchester United would miss Dimitar Berbatov’s goals (31 per cent in the Premier League), although they score more overall than anyone. Fulham are heavily reliant on Clint Dempsey (30 per cent) while not having a second scorer with a decent tally.
At the other extreme, Blackburn spread their goal load around most evenly, while Arsenal and Chelsea are among the teams who rely less than 20 per cent on any one player for their goals.
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