Man City has the numbers
The print marketing option enables my clients to expand their exposure and capture our local audience. In good times and bad - the Townsville Bulletin readership has been integral to achieving good prices in a timely manner!
STATISTICS often don’t tell the whole story but some figures from Manchester City’s dominant 1- 0 win over Chelsea further highlighted the gulf in class between the Premier League leaders and the rest.
Chelsea arrived at Etihad Stadium as the English champions — for a few more weeks, anyway — but ended up playing ultra- defensively, bowing to the utter supremacy of a team that has turned the title race into a procession. City completed more passes ( 902) than any team has managed in a Premier League game.
City midfielder Ilkay Gundogan completed more passes ( 161) than any other single player in a Premier League game.
City had 78 per cent possession in the first half, a scarcely believable stat against a top- six rival.
Ultimately, the most important number for City was 18 — the record points lead it holds after 29 games thanks to Bernardo Silva’s winner just 33 seconds into the second half. FIORENTINA captain Davide Astori was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday at the age of 31 after a suspected cardiac arrest before an Italian league match.
The defender, who also played 14 times for Italy’s national team, was discovered by Fiorentina staff when he failed to show up for breakfast at the hotel in Udine. Fiorentina’s game at Udinese in northeast Italy was called off, along with all fixtures in the country’s top two divisions.
Astori’s body was taken to the Santa Maria della Misericordia Hospital for an autopsy.
“The belief is that the player died of a cardiac arrest by natural causes,” Udine prosecutor Antonio De Nicolo said. “It is strange that such a thing should happen to a professional who is so closely monitored without there being any warning signs.”
Fiorentina said Astori, who had played for the club since 2015, was “hit by a sudden illness”. IF Queensland Reds players were still on a high after celebrating a rare Super Rugby win, they were brought right back to earth with a Brad Thorn- led weights session.
So determined was the new coach to keep the lid on after Friday night’s 18- 10 victory over the Brumbies, Thorn took matters into his own hands when players reported for duty at the Ballymore gym yesterday morning.
The former All Blacks great has a fearsome reputation when it comes to lifting weights and often swaps the club polo for a training singlet and joins players in routines.
And despite Queensland’s set- piece superiority against the Brumbies, Thorn still went through the video to show there are many areas for improvement in his rebuilding side.
“We’re not going to yahoo and pump our own tyres up,” lock Kane Douglas told reporters. “We know it’s a long season and it’s only one win.
“The forwards were still in there for an hour and a bit, going through every lineout and every scrum to see how we can improve.
“Thorny even ran the weights session this morning so he was pretty pumped to get the boys back into training routine for another week.
“He ran the abs and everything – it’s normally in your own time but it was in Brad’s time today.”
The Reds can’t afford to rest on their laurels given their opponents on Saturday night, the Bulls, boast one of Super Rugby’s most imposing forward packs and three Springbok regulars in Lood de Jager, Trevor Nyakane and Adriaan Strauss.
The Pretoria- based side was beaten 49- 35 by the Lions last weekend but will present a stern challenge to the Reds.
“All the South African teams are pretty big and the Bulls especially,” Douglas said.
“You’ve got to be ready for them and pay them the respect they need. Pretty much every week we say to ourselves it’s going to be won or lost in the forwards. We know if we don’t do our job it’s probably going to be a hard night.”