Why, who, what, when, where, how? This is the boring bit.

We get asked a lot of questions here at StatCity, mainly ‘who are you?’, ‘why don’t you collate assists stats?’ and ‘will you follow us back on Twitter?’. Find out the answers to our frequently asked questions and a bit more about ourselves below….

Who are you? We are a group of Batman-like figures who lurk deep under the Etihad Stadium (even deeper than Thaksin Shinawatra’s buried lucky charms) who calculate City’s statistics. No, we’re not really. In fact, we’re not a ‘we’ at all. StatCity is operated by one regular, run-of-the-mill Manchester City fan from Burnage with a penchant for spreadsheets, databases and numbers, and someone with far too much time on his hands! I like to refer to StatCity as ‘we’ to make me sound far more professional and impressive than I actually am. All smoke and mirrors here, sorry.

Why are your stats different to others? Because we like to be different! No, the main reason is because of the number of different sources we have used to collate all of our information. We also only start our coverage of City games from the 1892-93 season, whereas some outlets include the 25 games that City played before that period (although they weren’t actually classed as ‘competitive’ games). A summary of said games can be found here. For the purpose and continuity of this website, we class the following competitions as ‘competitive’ games; Charity/Community Shield, English Test Match, Football League Trophy, Full Members Cup, Texaco Cup and obviously the European and domestic leagues and cups that City have contested over the years. In addition to this, we also don’t track events from pre-season friendlies due to some differing in match length and rules.

Why don’t you collate assists stats? We don’t collate assists stats because in the world of football analytics, it is somewhat of a grey area. Some outlets count the final pass that sets up a goal, whereas some outlets count key passes within the build up of a goal being scored. We do refer to both on our Twitter feed throughout a season so this may lead to confusion. For that we simply apologise.

There are some stats missing, why? The StatCity project is very much a work in progress. We are inputting stats as fast as our little fingers will allow and are constantly researching MCFC related historic events. We are inputting matches and player stats in reverse chronological order, so there may be some wait before you see the line-up from the opening game against Bootle from back in 1892 on here!

Can I have a follow-back or retweet on Twitter? We do try and follow back everyone who requests a follow. We use our Twitter feed to gauge mainly football based accounts so don’t be offended if we don’t follow back, it’s definitely nothing personal. In terms of retweets, we are very concious of what tweets we put out there, so as long as it’s a worthy cause or MCFC related plug then we’re more than happy to hand out the retweets.

On Twitter, you deleted our retweet/reply, why? Our Twitter feed is primarily for our statistical output. We love engaging with our followers on Twitter but after we believe a conversation has finished, we then go back and delete any correspondence, simply for clean-up purposes. Again, this is nothing personal – please don’t hate us! In regards to retweets, we allow a retweet to stay on our feed for 24 hours.

Can I use the stats featured on this site? Of course! We believe that these stats should be shared for one and all. Yes, it’s been a long laborious task collating and translating our findings but no one person owns intellectual property rights over statistics so please feel free to use and redistribute any stats that you deem relevant to your project. A little mention would be nice though.

Will you contribute to our project? We would love to. Think of us as a gun for hire. Simply send us your request via the mediums listed below and we’ll get involved. We had a regular article printed on the official MCFC website and have had our works published in books and other literature in the past so we’re not shy of getting our hands dirty!

How Can I Support Your Project? There are various payment options via our Donorbox platform where you can donate any amount that will go towards our website server fees or even just buying us a coffee - you can set up recurring payments or simply a one off thank-you. Keep your eyes peeled for our exclusive supporter tiers coming soon.

My question isn’t on this list, how can I get in touch? If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to contact us via Facebook, Twitter or even by email at stats@statcity.co.uk.