Manchester City 5-1 AEK Athens: Foden's hat-trick and the points-return puzzle

Manchester City beat AEK Athens 5-1 at the Etihad on Tuesday night, and for long stretches it looked like the kind of performance that settles arguments rather than starts them. Elliot Anderson opened the scoring in the 12th minute, Phil Foden scored a hat-trick, and Rayan Cherki added a fourth after Stavros Pilios had briefly pulled one back for the visitors. The scoreline was emphatic. The underlying numbers were emphatic too. And yet the question that follows City through this season is not whether they can play like this, but whether playing like this is actually converting into the points their performances deserve.

Start with the raw output. City had 64 per cent possession, 17 shots to AEK's 11, seven on target to three, and four big chances to one. Their expected goals figure was 2.74 against AEK's 1.17. They scored five. That is a goals-minus-xG figure of 2.26 in a single match, against an average of 0.0 across their earlier 2026/27 fixtures. In other words, this was the night the finishing finally ran ahead of the chance creation, rather than the other way around.

The volume numbers tell a similar story of a team pushing higher and harder than usual. City took eight corners here, against an average of 5.4 across their earlier matches this season. They registered 54 touches in the opposition box, against an average of 37.4. Their set-play xG was 1.09, against an average of 0.3. These are not marginal shifts.

But here is where the season's broader pattern complicates the picture. City's results before and including this match, oldest first, read: 5-0 against Norwich in the EFL Cup, 5-3 against Sunderland, 3-0 at Liverpool, 2-4 at home to PSG in the Champions League, 3-2 against Ipswich, and now 5-1 against AEK. That is a lot of goals, a lot of attacking output, and a points return that has not always matched the dominance. The PSG defeat in particular stands out: a match in which City's process was strong enough to suggest a better result, but the points went the other way.

That is the tension at the heart of this team right now. They are producing the kind of attacking numbers that usually separate the top sides from the rest, but the table is not yet reflecting that separation.

Phil Foden's hat-trick is the most encouraging individual note. He scored at 34, 65 and 76 minutes, and his movement across the front line caused AEK problems all evening. But his own assessment afterwards was telling. He said he was heading in the right direction but still "a long way" from being back to his best. Enzo Maresca, the City coach, insisted Foden's talent was never in doubt. That combination of a player scoring three and still feeling short of his ceiling is a useful window into where this City side are: dangerous, improving, but not yet fully themselves.

The AEK match, then, is best read not as a statement win but as a data point in a longer argument. City's attacking volume rose against their earlier-season average, their set-play threat was unusually high, and their finishing finally outran their expected goals. Whether that becomes a trend or remains a one-night spike is the question the next few matches will answer. The process is there. The points return is the part still waiting to catch up.