Ten key points about Neymar's goal spree

Neymar has been having an outstanding season for Barça, and is the second highest goalscorer after Leo Messi. We have studied his stats from every different angle and made the following series of curious observations:

• Neymar has scored 19 goals in all competitions this season, which is already four more than the 15 he scored in his debut season at FCB.

• Those goals make him the team’s second highest goalscorer. Of the nineteen, fourteen were scored in La Liga, three in the Champions League and two in the Spanish Cup.

• Most of those goals (16) were scored with his stronger right foot, although two came from his left and one was a header.

• Neymar has taken 1,653 minutes of on-field action to get those goals, which equate to an average of one every 878 minutes on the pitch.

• That’s a vast improvement on last season, when he played a total of 2,939 minutes, thus meaning he found the net once every 195 minutes.

• Neymar scored 16 of his goals as a member of the starting eleven, and he came off the bench to get the other three.

• Neymar has started 18 games this season, totalling 1,166 minutes played. In other words, his goalscoring ratio is slighter better, one every 72 minutes, in games when he is on from the start.

• Neymar has also had the second highest number of shots this season, 64, of which 29 have been on target. His conversion rate has therefore been a mightily impressive 65%.

• He doesn’t just score goals, he provides them too. After he laid up Pedro at Elche on Saturday, Neymar took his tally for assists in La Liga this season up to four.

• The striker is also one of the players that has been on the receiving end of the most free kicks this season, 72, which have led to no fewer than 14 bookings.