Top 10 Unknown PL Stats
- Jordan Tavener
- Feb 5, 2017
- 6 min read
With us already doing a top 10 for the best summer deals, we are now starting a new series of top 10's that will be coming ever Sunday. This week we are looking at the statistics and final standings of the Premier League across the entire era that most of you will not know existed. What would be the point in telling you all the stats you already know when we can bring you some that may surprise you?
10
Newcastle and Manchester United's Crackers

In the 2002/03 season, Manchester United won the title with Newcastle coming up in third place, but their games were the most entertaining across the whole season. The two highest scoring games of the whole season included eight goals, and both included these two teams. Newcastle are a team that would not want to relive those games however, as they lost 5-3 over at Old Trafford, before being embarrassed in front of their own crowd by losing 6-2 to Sir Alex Ferguson's side. It was Scholes and Van Nistelrooy that Newcastle fans won't have the fondest memories of, as the Dutchman scored a hat-trick and Scholes scored 1 at Old Trafford and Scholes scored a hat-trick and Van Nistelrooy got 1 at St. James' Park. Two games for the Magpies to forget that is for sure.
9
The 8 Goal Difference

Strangely, up until 1999 only two Premier League teams qualified for the Champions League so the race to try and break into the top two was tight and competitive. In the 1996/97 season, Manchester United raced to the title, but left three teams battling for the final spot. Liverpool looked in pole position but with only 5 points from their final 5 games, and ultimately only drawing on the final day, they gave Newcastle and Arsenal the chance to pounce and with Newcastle winning 5-0, they came second, with a 3 goal difference better than Arsenal and an 8 goal difference better than Liverpool. All three finished on 68 points and with the exact same wins, draws and losses, so it was one of the tightest Champions League place battles of all time.
8

Goals, Goals, Goals!
In the 2009/10 season, Chelsea became the first team in Premier League history to score 100 goals in a single season. Although they did do this, they only just won the title as they won by just a point and it has been proven that scoring that many goals does not guarantee you the title as Liverpool and Manchester City both found the net over 100 times in the 2013/14 season where City came out on top. In this season, Chelsea scored seven or more goals on four separate games, at home to Aston Villa, Stoke, Sunderland and Wigan, and made Wigan the only team to lose two games by 8 goals in the same season as they lost 8-0 to the blues and 9-1 to Spurs. The two main men to score the goals in this campaign were Drogba and Lampard, scoring 29 and 22 respectively.
7

Derby's Horror Show
We all know about the embarrassing 11 points they got in the 2007/08 season and the fact it was the lowest any team had ever got in the Premier League, but they also scored the least in the whole league with 20 goals, another unwanted record. Their top scorer in that season was Kenny Miller, who scored just 4 goals in 30 appearances. The worst thing is that three players actually out-scored their whole team, with Cristiano Ronaldo scoring 31, and Fernando Torres and Emmanuel Adebayor scoring 24. Surely we won't ever see a worse team than this Derby County one, but it would interesting to see if anyone could come near their two records.
6

Arsenal's Almost Invincibles
Arsenal may have gone all season unbeaten in the 2003/04 season, but it could have been done even earlier as in the 2001/02 season they went the whole season away from home without defeat, only slipping up at home. If they could have made Highbury a fortress two seasons earlier, we could have been looking at a slightly different invincibles side, but they did learn their lesson and completed the unmatched achievement two years later. They did still go on to win the title but with a pretty disappointing three home defeats, but that doesn't matter anymore does it Arsenal fans?
5

The Top Clubs
It may come as no surprise that Manchester United won the first Premier League title back in the 1992/93 season, but the teams that challenged them the closest may shock you a little. Making up the top 5 was Aston Villa, Norwich, Blackburn, and QPR, all of which now play in the Championship. Norwich actually came third with a goal difference of -3, that is a goal difference of a mid-table club. Sheffield United came 14th with a goal difference of +1. So with the powers of Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City and Spurs in the last few years, it seems strange that those teams had the ability to follow United the closest.
4

The Unwanted 100 Club
I never even knew Swindon had ever been in the Premier League but in the 1993/94 season, Swindon Town came into the league but didn't do a great job of trying to stay up. On the final day of the season they had conceded 95 league goals, but then lost 5-0 at home to Leeds, finished bottom of the league and finished with conceding 100 goals, the only Premier League team to ever do so. They actually conceded four or more goals in 9 games of the season. The closest team to them in terms of leaking goals was Oldham Athletic, who conceded 68, 32 less than the Robins. Who knows if this will ever happen again, but I'm sure Swindon are a team that would like to see it repeated.
3

Manchester City's Low-Scorers
With the money of Manchester City now proving a dominant force in their bid for superiority, it seems hard to think they were struggling to put the ball in the back of the net in the 2006/07 season. In fact it was so bad that they only scored 10 home goals all season, making it a ratio of around 1 goal every two games at home. They actually only scored in 6 home games all season and failed to score in the other 13, quite shocking seeming the players they have had over the last few years. It just goes to show just how much the money of the Abu Dhabi United Group has done over the last 8 years as in their first season in charge they scored 58 goals across the whole Premier League campaign, twice as much as they did in the 2006/07 season when they scored 29.
2

Lack of English Scorers
With the quality of players we have had in the Premier League it is easy to see why we have so many players scoring a lot of goals, but in the 2015/16 season, Harry Kane became the first Englishman to get the golden boot since the 1999/00 campaign when Kevin Phillips scored 30 goals for Sunderland. With Wayne Rooney having his best seasons in that time it is so hard to believe he never won the golden boot and now probably never will. The amount of foreign players increasing in the country has given the English forwards less chance to win the individual honour, with the quality of Henry, Van Nistelrooy, Drogba, Ronaldo, Suarez and Van Persie to name some, holding back our home grown talent, but it is also showing a sign of how far behind we have been.
1

Palace's Yo-Yo's
This one may be known to Palace fans but I'm sure they will not want to read this. Crystal Palace have never been a top Premier League side, but until they got promoted most recently, they had failed to stay up in any of the four top flight seasons they had participated in. In the first Premier League season they went down on goal difference, in the 1994/95 season they went down being three points off safety. Then in the 1997/98 season they were rock bottom and didn't return to the Premier League until the 2004/05 season, when of course they got relegated after the great escape of West Brom put them down for a fourth successive season. When they came back into the league again in 2013/14 it looked like it may happen again, but Tony Pulis pulled it off to keep them in the league for the first time. They must be happy that record finally came to an end.
Comentários