Everton host Manchester City this weekend in the Premier League, a match that will mark David Moyes’ 16th meeting with Pep Guardiola in the competition and another test of a run that has gone heavily in City’s favour.
City arrive unbeaten in their last 11 league games — eight wins and three draws, worth 24 points while they conceded just eight goals across that run — and they are unbeaten in their last 17 Premier League meetings with Everton, winning 14 and drawing three. Everton, by contrast, have lost each of their last two league games and have now lost their last eight home league encounters with Manchester City.
The history between the two managers deepens the match’s stakes. Moyes has never beaten Guardiola in the Premier League across spells at Sunderland, West Ham United and Everton; his record stands at two draws and 13 defeats. This weekend will be the 16th time the two meet in the division, a sequence only matched in stubborn futility by a handful of managers when pitted against the same opponent.
Recent results add a sharper edge. Everton conceded 90th-minute winners in each of their last two league games, against Liverpool and West Ham United. No side in Premier League history has conceded a 90th-minute winner in three successive matches, which magnifies what is now an acute late-game problem for Moyes’s side.
The tactical subplot is plain in the numbers. Only Arsenal have recorded more through balls in the Premier League this season than Manchester City, while only Wolves, Burnley and Manchester City have faced more through balls than Everton. That suggests the contest could be decided by the speed and quality of City’s ball progression against an Everton defence increasingly exposed in transition and under pressure late in games.
Individual form and creative connections underline why City remain such a threat. Erling Haaland has scored 24 Premier League goals this season, four of them assisted by Jérémy Doku; only Bruno Fernandes has provided more assists for a team-mate’s goals this season than Doku has for Haaland. Doku has created 24 chances following a carry in the league and made 82 carries into the opponent’s penalty area — nine more than anyone else — figures that make him a recurring factory of dangerous situations for City.
Everton’s opponents also contain attacking anomalies of their own. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall has eight goals and 3.8 expected goals in the Premier League this season, and only Antoine Semenyo and Harry Wilson have a better goals-to-expected-goals differential than him. Those over-performance numbers mean Everton can still manufacture moments that unsettle even the most consistent sides.
The tension runs along predictable lines: City’s sustained excellence in head-to-heads and current unbeaten streak against Everton on one side; Everton’s recent habit of conceding decisive late goals and their long run of home defeats to City on the other. Moyes has shown an ability to steady his teams, but the facts on paper — the 14 wins and three draws in 17 league meetings for City, Everton’s eight straight home league losses to them, City’s 11-game unbeaten league run — point unambiguously toward Manchester City as the side most likely to extend their dominance.
Given the weight of history and recent form, Manchester City arrive as the clear favourites and are likely to leave Merseyside with their unbeaten run against Everton intact; Everton’s immediate task is to arrest a late-goal problem and find a way to disrupt City’s ball progression before the game becomes a procession.
