DEREK Adams has the stats to prove how well City have been playing.

The Bantams boss waxed lyrical about his side’s dominant display against Walsall – despite seeing two points chucked away in a frustrating 1-1 home draw.

Managers are often guilty of talking up a performance after the result has gone awry.

But City racked up enough chances to have won as handsomely as Adams suggested – only to shoot themselves in the foot by not making them count.

And the data that the Scot studies very closely backs up his opinion about the quality of City’s play.

He said: “On the ‘goal expected’ table we’re second at this moment in time, which is good.

“I do pay attention to that. It’s something I work with and like to look at.

“Last year, when we were at Morecambe we had nearly the highest number of chances created in a game.

“That’s what our game is based on – creating chances to score goals.

“It backs up what you want and that’s why you have to play in a certain style to create that many chances. We certainly do that.

“We just need to continue making chances but obviously have to take more of them.”

The term ‘xG’, which has come into football in recent years, is a statistical measurement of the quality of goalscoring chances and the likelihood of them being converted.

Different factors are taken into account in assessing the strength of the chance – whether it was a header or shot, the distance and angle and the context.

A rebound falling to a player six yards out directly in front of goal will obviously be a much better scoring opportunity as opposed to a long-range drive from outside the penalty area.

If a chance is calculated as 0.5xG, for example, you would expect it to be scored 50 per cent of the time.

According to the d3d4football.com website, only Rochdale have created more chances in League Two than the Bantams so far.

And City have three entries in the top 10 most creative players in the division – Callum Cooke, who is second behind Mansfield’s Stephen McLaughlin, Andy Cook and Charles Vernam.

Figures from The Near Post site on Twitter also claim Cooke provided six key passes against Walsall with an overall accuracy of 93.5 per cent.

Ultimately, the only numbers that matter are on the scoreboard but Adams is pleased to see the team playing in the style that he wants a month into the new campaign.

“It does take a bit of time but when you’ve had Saturday and Tuesday games all the time it isn’t easy,” he added.

“But we’ve competed well in every game, except for at Leyton Orient.

“The players are delighted with the way they’ve been performing. They’ve shown since pre-season training how well they can play.

“You look at the number of chances we created on Saturday. We obviously just need to put one of them in the back of the net.

“If we’d have got the second goal, I’m sure we would have won the game.”

“But take nothing away from how we played on the day, passed the ball and created openings. We have to continue working along the same lines.”

Adams is confident that Theo Robinson will be quickly up to speed with the rest of the squad.

The deadline-day recruit made his debut from the bench as a late substitute against Walsall – and had a chance which he fired over the bar from just outside the penalty area.

It was Robinson’s first involvement of the season after being frozen out at Port Vale.

Adams had not planned to bring on the 32-year-old but said: “We needed to get a goal and it was coming to the later stages of the game.

“We’d obviously taken on (Caolan) Lavery and we added Theo as well.

“He’s behind everyone else (in terms of fitness) but the more days he gets training with us then he’ll improve.”