Pep Guardiola has already given the answer to Jadon Sancho's early Manchester United 'struggles'

“Always we talk about the statistics – the players today play for the statistics but this is the biggest mistake they can do." That is what Pep Guardiola told the media in his press conference earlier this week when asked about the form of Jack Grealish.

Grealish was signed for £100m in the summer but has four goals and three assists in all competitions to show for it to date but Guardiola's comments suggest the raw tangibles need to sometimes be scrutinised in more detail.

"Statistics are just a bit of information that we have but there are players that make the team play good and they are not into statistics. But the players say how many goals I score or how many assists," he said.

“With these kinds of situations, they forget everything. Statistics never existed before. It’s how you play today if you perform to your maximum, to your best, help your teammates to make the process defensively and offensively better – it’s enough. Thanks to that we are going to win."

Some fans have taken this out of context to deduce from these comments that Guardiola does not believe statistics to matter, which is not what the City boss was inferring. Rather, he was saying that the major surface-level statistics with which we judge forwards do not tell the full story.

But Grealish is not the only player that has been tarred with this same brush. Since his £73m move to Manchester United this summer, Jadon Sancho has been under the microscope for every performance and a number of pundits have been quick to point out that his goal and assist numbers do not match his pricetag.

A number of pundits were quick to jump on the winger's form while others have tried to defend him, citing poor management under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and needing time to