Let’s be honest, I love statistics.
As I mentioned in my article on possession versus results, most things in life can be boiled down to cold, hard numbers.
Unfortunately, as the season has progressed, many of the statistics I have shared have become either heinously outdated or just plain wrong. To rectify this I will be doing a ‘State of the Stats’ every now and again to keep you up to date on the numbers and analysis of the beautiful game.
In my first article of the season I looked at the commonalities between recently promoted sides that stayed up in the Premier League. In doing so I found three statistics that, if achieved, seemed to guarantee safety.
Of the recently promoted sides in the last five years …
- Only one team that scored more than 45 goals after being promoted was promptly relegated (Blackpool)
- No club whose top scorer has notched 13+ goals has been relegated
- No team has been relegated while conceding fewer than 70 goals
So how do Burnley, Leicester City and Queens Park Rangers stand up to these marks? Surprisingly well in fact.
With Charlie Austin having already scored 15 goals and Danny Ings scoring 9, both QPR and Burnley are on track to have a striker score 13+ goals this season. All three are set to concede less than 70 goals but none are on pace to score 45.
Unfortunately, despite these statistics, it looks like Leicester are sure to go down with QPR and Burnley holding out hope despite all being in the relegation zone.
My second article addressed the quickly diminishing value of loyalty in the Premier League. The highlight of this was pinpointing just how few players have been at the same club for five or more seasons. At the end of the summer transfer window …
Out of the current twenty Premier League sides, since the 2009/10 season …
- Only 72 players are with the same club …
- … which translates to 13.3% of players
- Only Chelsea, Manchester United, Everton and Arsenal have more than five players remaining
- Leicester City, Queens Park Rangers, Hull City and Sunderland each have just one player left
After the January transfer window, including loans, only 66 players remain at their clubs from five years ago. With Ashley Cole signing for Roma and Manchester United losing both Anderson and Darren Fletcher, only Arsenal and Everton have five or more players that remain from the 2009/10 season.
The third ‘Let’s be Honest‘ article of the year focused on the impact of possession on winning matches. We are often told by pundits and commentators that if you win possession you are more likely to win matches, but is it actually true?
In mid-November the statistics looked like this:
- This season the top five in possession are Arsenal, Manchester City, Everton, Manchester United and Liverpool …
- They are currently placed 6th, 3rd, 10th, 7th and 11th. An average of of 7.4
- Of the six matches this season where a team has held more than 70% possession, the dominant side has won just three times
Currently the top five possession sides are Manchester United, Manchester City, Tottenham, Chelsea, and Everton …
- They are currently placed 4th, 2nd, 7th, 1st, and 14th. An average of 5.6
- Teams have held 70%+ possession 8 times since the last article with 6 wins and two draws
- Manchester United boast 4 such matches …
- … and have won all four
So it does seem like dominating possession has been more fruitful than it was early in the season as teams that have done so have both increased their league position and winning percentage. I still hold that possession statistics are more indicative of how teams play against you than how you play, but there we are.
Right before the January window opened I looked at the impact of January spending on league success. The statistics showed that there is a diminishing rate of return when spending over £5 million.
- Over the past five seasons the title winners spent just £13.5 million in total
- Chelsea have spent the most with £148.5 million, the year they won the league they spent zero
- Teams that spent £5 million or more finished, on average, with two more points in the second half of the season than teams that did not spend
- Four clubs have spent £30 million or more. All four moved up the table and gained points, but none improved to a crucial position (safety, top four or champions)
Arsenal, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Leicester, Manchester City, Southampton and Swansea all spent £5 million or more. Only two of these teams (Arsenal and Crystal Palace) have improved their league position since the end of the January window. We will have to wait until the end of the season to truly judge whether or not this trend holds, but for now? It is not looking good.
The league table seemed incredibly compact late in January so I compared this season against seasons past to judge just how rare it was for this many teams to still be playing relevant matches this late in the season.
With ‘contending‘ meaning within six points of their objective, at this point in the season:
- The fifteen year average for contending teams is 11.9
- This year there are sixteen contending teams
- That is the second highest in the history of the Premier League only behind …
- … last year when seventeen teams were still contending
- The past two years have therefore had thirty-three teams contending, the same amount as the previous three years combined
Perhaps unsurprisingly the table has spread out a bit with just eleven teams still within touching distance of their objectives. However, this season and last do still stand out as the most competitive to this point in the last ten years.
The most recent article I wrote was all about the impressive debut seasons of Charlie Austin, Harry Kane and Danny Ings. They compare impressively to historically great English strikers and are having some of the best debut seasons ever seen in the Premier League.
Pulled from that article are the following statistics:
- Harry Kane and Charlie Austin, joint third on this list, still have twelve matches to play
- Kane has scored in 62% of matches played this season …
- … the most for an English striker in their debut season, yet only two percentage points ahead of …
- … Charlie Austin at 60%
- At this pace, Kane and Austin will both finish with 20 goals
- They would be just the second English duo to score 20+ goals this millennium …
- … and the only two to do so in their debut season in the Premier League era!
Since then, Charlie Austin (15) has netted two more goals while Harry Kane (14) has added one to his season tally. Both are still on pace to score 20+ goals.
So that is what the numbers say about what has happened in the league so far this season.
Statistically speaking, I have had some ups and downs on projecting current statistics into future ones, but once the season comes to a close we will have a more accurate assessment.
Now all that remains is to wait to see how wrong I was!
