Man City penalty record under Pep Guardiola was a mystery solved by Riyad Mahrez

For a man who likes to write the scripts of football matches before his teams go out to play, Pep Guardiola, on the face of it, has a curious view of penalties.

The Manchester City boss must be relieved that Riyad Mahrez has emerged as a reliable and consistent penalty taker, especially in big matches, after three times seeing his sides crash out of the Champions League on the back of missing from 12 yards.

Mahrez had been substituted on Saturday as City missed yet another spot-kick, at Norwich, although Raheem Sterling papered over the cracks by knocking in the rebound.

Guardiola's time with the Blues has seen some of the most exhilarating, artistic, scientifically perfect football this planet has ever seen, played by some of the most graceful, intelligent and technically gifted players.

And yet, over the last five years, City have had a pretty dreadful record on penalties - at one point last year, they missed four Premier League penalties on the spin, taking them to nine misses out of 20, in just 15 months.

It reached the point where a penalty award was barely celebrated by City fans, who reckoned the chances of them scoring from 12 yards were about 50-50 - and the stats backed them up!

The desperation was such at one point that Guardiola said goalkeeper Ederson had gone from being a joke option to "only a half-joke”.

Ederson himself was game, keen to emulate his hero Rogerio Ceni, who scored 39 of the 43 penalties he took for Sao Paulo in league football, and netted 70 in total, to add to 60 goals from free kicks and one from normal play in his haul of 131, a record for a goalkeeper.

It is a mystery why footballers who strike the ball as beautifully as Kevin De Bruyne, Sergio Aguero, Ilkay Gundogan, and Mahrez, have