Premier League: Lies, damned lies and statistics
You can use statistics to prove anything, 68% of people know that, and while Chelsea enjoy their title success as the dust settles on another entertaining Premier League season, the stats make for interesting reading.
For instance, if all matches had ended at half-time then not only would you be out of the ground and into the pub a lot earlier, but Spurs would have finished as runners-up and Manchester United wouldn’t have even qualified for the Champions League.
Sunderland are half the team without Darren Bent. The forward scored 50% of his team’s goals during the campaign (well, a beach ball scored one), while the Mackems’ nine red cards are the most that a team has received during a Premier League season. They picked up the most bookings during the campaign too.
Perhaps success is measured in height? Liverpool fielded three of the top 10 smallest players to grace the division during the season, while champions Chelsea’s tiniest performer was Gael Kakuta, 48th on the list, and he only played once.
The Blues’ goal difference of +71 was the highest ever seen in the Premier League era, beating Manchester United’s 2007/08 total of +58, which United equalled this season, while the evergreen Ryan Giggs continued his record of scoring in every one of the Premier League’s 18 seasons. Giggs couldn’t outscore “own goals” during the campaign though, United benefitted from 12 of them during the season, which doubled the previous record.
Petr Cech and Pepe Reina each kept 17 clean sheets, the most in the division, while Wigan conceded 79 goals, which is the most that any team has let in during a campaign while not being relegated. The Latics’ 9-1 defeat to Spurs was the season’s highest scoring game.
There were fewer away wins (91) in 2009/10 than in any other Premier League season, while Liverpool’s paltry total of just 18 away goals in the league was fewer than Wolves and the same as Wigan, and relegated Burnley only won one home game fewer than European qualifiers Aston Villa. Martin O’Neill’s men were the only team to win more matches away than at home during the campaign.
Top scorer Didier Drogba started 32 games and scored 29 goals, but his strike rate is nothing compared to those of Danny Rose and Luis Boa Morte, who scored their only goal of the season on their only appearance of the season. Consistency is key.
Kevin Davies committed the most fouls of the season with 103, a whole 29 more than second placed Tim Cahill, but it was Davies’ Bolton team-mate Fabrice Muamba who received the most bookings, 11.
Eleven was the number of different players to score hat-tricks too, a list that included unlikely customers Yossi Benayoun, Salomon Kalou and Aruna Dindane, while Jack Robinson, a shock Liverpool debutant in yesterday’s draw with Hull, was the campaign’s youngest player at 16 years and 250 days old, a whole 23 years younger than David James, the oldest.
Steed Malbranque was hauled off an amazing 26 times by his Sunderland manager Steve Bruce, an impressive feat seeing as he only started 30 games, while spare a thought for Aston Villa’s Brad Guzan and Ali Al-Habsi of Bolton, who sat on the bench for every one of their team’s 38 games, without once getting on.
Enough proof that the life of a footballer isn’t always a rosy one, and that there will always be someone there to chronicle it.
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