Correlation FC

Bees lose away at Manchester City 2-0

The Bees travelled to Manchester City, prepared to take on one of the top teams in the world. The Bees defended well and put up a good fight, but were defeated by a strong City side and two deflected goals.

Jensen milestone

Mathias Jensen made his 250th appearance for the Bees, starting the game. He's been a regular player, both starting and coming off the bench for Keith Andrews.

Mathias Jensen's 250 Brentford appearances (source: FBref)

Over his years as a Brentford player, he's appeared in 4 different competitions, with most of his games now coming in the Premier League. Over his 6 full seasons, he's averaged 39 appearances per season.

Unexpected goals

Not many would have argued that Brentford deserved to win the game, but Manchester City weren't their usual dominant selves. Clearly, they had rotated their squad heavily and gave the night off to Erling Haaland. But the two goals they scored were somewhat unexpected. Throughout the whole night, they only generated an expected goal total of 0.61.

Rayan Cherki's first half goal came from a shot with an xG of only 0.04 – a 1 in 20 shot. It was well placed and took advantage of Hakon Valdimarsson being out of position after colliding with Kevin Schade. Michael Kayode got his head on the shot, but not enough to stop it from going in.

Savinho's second-half goal was also deflected, taking a massive bounce after Kristoffer Ajer partially blocked it. The ball bounced well over Valdimarsson's head and slid in just under the crossbar. The shot had an xG of 0.03, meaning it had a 1 in 33 chance of scoring.

Those numbers look bad for Valdimarsson, but he had no chance of stopping either shot. He did manage to stop the five other shots on target and looked comfortable in net all night.

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