At the weekend, Manchester City became the quickest team to breach the 100-goal mark in the Premier League era.

While the strikerforce of Sergio Aguero, Alvaro Negredo and Edin Dzeko and the midfield creators are rightly getting much credit for City's attacking exploits, one must also highlight the contribution of the full-backs this season.

For the most part City have played attacking midfielders like Samir Nasri and David Silva on both flanks over the past three seasons.

But playing a system where the wide players prefer to cut in also requires sufficient creativity from the full-back zones.

Last season proved to be a nadir in that department with Pablo Zabaleta, Gael Clichy, Aleksandar Kolarov and Micah Richards conspiring to provide just seven assists between them last season.

That contributed to the Sky Blues relatively meagre 66 goals that they scored in the Premier League last season which saw them outscored by Man United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool, with Tottenham also matching their 66 goals.

The stats also showed that crossing accuracy for the full-backs was far lower than many of their rivals that season.

Compare that to the title-winning season. 2011/12 saw City score 93 Premier League goals with the four full-backs providing 15 assists with Richards getting a high of 6 (just one fewer than all four full-backs managed as a whole in the following season.

This season, has seen Zabaleta and Kolarov provide numerous chances from the flanks and thus far the duo have 11 assists between them. The injury-ravaged Richards and Clichy have yet to provide a single assist this season. But at the current rate Zabaleta and Kolarov are on course to smash the full-back assists mark of 2011/12. Indeed both are among the Top 5 assisters at City this season.

In the graphic below the number of appearances is in brackets beside the assists.