What is the one statistic that a club needs in order to win the Premier League?

 

• What’s upsetting Fifa: maybe we should just sit down and read a book
• The opening fixture and a very early thought about how the new season will start.

By Tony Attwood

As I am absolutely sure you will know, no club other than Arsenal has gone a whole season unbeaten.  But that doesn’t mean that Arsenal had the best season ever when they didn’t lose a single game.   Indeed  I can still remember that final game of the Unbeaten Season (and the drive around the North Circular Road afterwards) as if it were last week.  But that hasn’t made Arsenal the most successful Premier League team in  terms of winning the league 

And I don’t say that because I want to knock Arsenal, of course not.  But rather to show that Arteta still has room to grow the club and make it even better in any direction he wishes to work on: goals scored, goals against, total number of wins…

Last season, Arsenal picked up 85 points, but in terms of points, that was only Arsenal’s fourth-best total in a Premier League season.  Indeed, Arsenal themselves have gained 90 points in a 38-game season, while 11 times, other clubs have got even more points. 

In fact, the highest in the 38-game campaign was 100 from ManC* in 2017/18 (the * indicating that there must be some question raised over where the money came from in relation to the club’s transfer expenditure – a matter still, even after all this time, left unresolved).

The most games won in a season was 32, but if we look at the fewest games lost, we know, of course, the answer – Arsenal are still out there on their own by not losing a single game in the 2003/4 season.   Interestingly, Chelsea lost six games in 2009/10 and still won the league!

Now the point about all this is one that I have tried to suggest before – that seasons are not identical.   If one has several teams in a season that are at or near the height of their abilities, then the chances are that no records will be broken, because those teams will be sharing the spoils between them.

Something around 29 times the league has been won by a club getting more than the 85 points Arsenal got last season.   But that doesn’t imply Arsenal were poor, or indeed that the whole league was poor last season.  Rather, the opposite – there was quite a battle going on between two or more of the best clubs in the league.

Arsenal’s best goal difference in a title-winning season was +62, but in 1998/9 Arsenal won the league with a goal difference of +42, something they also did in 2009/10.  No Premier League team has ever won the league with a lower goal difference at the end of the season.  

All of which serves to make one simple point: unless a club is going to have a perfect season, there is always a chance another team can do better.

So as we have noted, the most points gained in a season is 100 (Manchester City) and the most goals scored in a season was also scored by ManC – 106.

The most wins in a season was 32 out of the 38 games (that has happened three times), and the most defeats of a team that has won the league was seven, achieved once by Manchester United.  And it is interesting that Man U also hold the record for the most goals conceded while winning the league: 45 in 2000 (the lowest was Chelsea with 15).

The top goal difference of course came from ManC in their free spending seasons with 2.79 on one occasion, but the lowest by a club winning the league was 1.79 in 2008/09.   The highest average number of goals conceded per game in a title-winning season by the league-winning side was  1.18 by Manchester United in 1999/2000.

Which brings us all the way across the numbers to the number of points.   Manchester City hit 100 points in 2017/18 to win the title.  At the other end, Arsenal and ManU have both won the league with 85 points.

So overall, ten clubs have scored more points in winning the league than Arsenal did in the unbeaten season, but none of them remained unbeaten through the whole season.  To put it simply, there are multiple ways of winning the league, but that is something many commentators choose to forget.

A club can win the league by having a high-scoring set of forwards, or a brilliant defence (like Chelsea conceding only 15 in 2004/5).  Thus, it would be very helpful to have every part of the team being record-beaters, but that is not essential.  Certainly, scoring 106 is more exciting than scoring 6,8 but each can be enough if the rest of the statistics are right, to win the league.

In 2003/4 Arsenal did not break any records in terms of league statistics except one – they were unbeaten.  But that is still the statistic that many people remember.

But still, there is no one statistic other than the total number of points that guarantees a league title, but not losing a game can be extremely helpful.