Who’s the best in the Premier League? You might be surprised!

I saw the Opta statistics on the Sky Sports website yesterday and they make fascinating reading. The statistics relate to just about every possible piece of action in the Premier League this season so far and are broken down into individual players and by team.

Have a look at the following list of figures and you’ll see some surprising facts:

Top Shooter: Amr Zaki (Wigan) 41
Top Passer: Xabi Alonso (Liverpool) 842
Top Tackler: Fabrice Muamba (Bolton) 56
Most Dribbles & Runs: Shaun Wright-Phillips (Chelsea/Man City) 63
Most Crosses: David Bentley (Tottenham) 134
Most Offsides: Emmanuel Adebayor (Arsenal) 30
Most Fouls: Kevin Davies (Bolton) 37
Team with most fouls: Blackburn 189
Team with most shots: Arsenal 185

So, Paul Ince may have been wrong to react to Ray Wilkins’ comments about Blackburn being a physical team quite so angrily. The facts speak for themselves that Blackburn have committed more fouls than any other side.

Those who say that Arsenal play pretty football but try to walk the ball into the goal rather than being more direct, may need to think again. Arsenal have had more shots than anyone else.

Those who think that David Bentley has been less than successful so far for Tottenham should ask themselves what he was bought to do. He has supplied more crosses than anyone else. Tottenham couldn’t ask for much more than that.

Let’s look at the top goalkeepers:

Goalkeeper – Team – Saves – Saves/shots
Carson -West Brom -55 – 72%
Turnbull – Middlesbrough – 53 – 77%
Howard – Everton – 49 – 71%
Jaaskelainen – Bolton – 46 – 78%
James – Portsmouth – 44 – 71%

I have twice selected Jussi Jaaskelainen as my ‘Hot keeper’ of the week so that is confirmed as a good decision, but the fact that Scott Carson and Ross Turnbull have both featured as ‘Not hot keeper’ seems as though I may have been very unfair.

There are more surprises when it comes to the Premier League’s tacklers:

Tackler – Team – Tackles – Success rate
Muamba – Bolton – 56 – 82%
Malbranque – Sunderland – 54 – 76%
Butt – Newcastle – 54 – 63%
Murphy – Fulham – 53 – 81%
Zuiverloon – West Brom – 53 – 77%

I certainly wouldn’t have included Sunderland’s Steed Malbranque or Fulham’s Danny Murphy on any list of ball-winning midfielders. I may have included Nicky Butt but look at how low his success rate is compared to the others.

The list of passers is a lot less surprising:

Passer -Team – Passes – Accuracy
Xabi Alonso – Liverpool – 842 – 86%
Fabregas – Arsenal – 839 – 81%
Lampard – Chelsea – 814 – 86%
Mikel – Chelsea – 794 – 90%
Denilson – Arsenal – 780 – 87%

There may be no surprises with the names at the top but I was a little surprised to see Obi Mikel as the most accurate.

The Premier League’s hot-shots are well known, but look at the ratio of goals to attempts:

Scorer – Team – Goals – Goal/shots
Anelka – Chelsea – 10 – 27%
Zaki – Wigan – 8 – 20%
Bent – Tottenham – 7 – 29%
Robinho – Man City – 7 – 25%
Agbonlahor – Aston Villa – 6 – 38%

The figure of 38% of shots resulting in goals achieved by Gabby Agbonlahor at Aston Villa is quite remarkable. To put that figure in perspective, if Amr Zaki had the same success rate, he would have scored sixteen goals by now.

Now let’s look at some of the team statistics. When it comes to goalscoring, Chelsea and Arsenal lead the way in goals scored, attempts at goal and attempts on target. However, when it comes to the percentage of attempts on target, neither side come in the top five. Manchester City are way out in front, hitting the target with 53% of their attempts, closely followed by Hull City with 50%.

Aston Villa, Manchester United and Middlesbrough are also more accurate with their shooting than either Chelsea or Arsenal. Interestingly, joint leaders Liverpool are way down the accuracy field only hitting the target with 38% of their attempts on goal.

The final set of statistics relate to the performance of the teams in each half. This becomes particularly interesting if you are a West Ham fan. The Hammers sit third from the top of the table in first half performances, with twenty points from their twelve games. The reason why they have plummeted down the table to sit just one point above the drop zone is fully explained by the fact that they sit rock bottom of the second half table with just six points.

It seems that either some more fitness training is required at Upton Park or Gianfranco Zola needs to brush up his half-time team talk performances!

Another team to suffer in the second half are Manchester United. They are second in the first half table and only fifteenth in the second half table. I’ll leave you to tell Fergie he’s getting his half-time team talks wrong!!

So there we are. Statistics don’t tell us everything and of course we all know that they can be made to say whatever you want them to say. Someone famous once said that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. Having said all that, I did find it interesting to go through these facts and figures.

I hope you did too!