By Brian Sears 23 January 2015 The formation of the Premier League from the 1992-93 season marked a major change in English football as the gap between the new top division and the rest of football quickly became a gulf. At a glance the first graphic below pretty much sums up what happened in financial […]

By Brian Sears 13 January 2012 In 20 years of Premier League football and having played 754 games in the revamped division, Manchester United have only faced their present indignity of consecutive defeats on 13 previous occasions. By comparison, their strongest long-term rivals in the PL era, Arsenal, have had back-to-back defeats 32 times. Two league […]

By Brian Sears 4 November 2011 The amount of points being won at home in the Premier League is at an all-time in the 20-year history of the competition. With more than a quarter of the season gone, only 151 of 272 points have been earned by the home side – or 55.5 per cent. […]

By Brian Sears 30 September 2011 As if Bolton’s start to this season hadn’t been tough enough, they now face the visit of Chelsea – who in their last dozen visits to Bolton have had a remarkable turnaround in fortunes. In the pair’s Premier League games on Bolton turf, Bolton began with two victories; McGinlay, Curcic […]

By Brian Sears 26 August 2011 Earlier this month we discussed the freakishly good away results being recorded in the early stages of this English season – so many more than we’d expect. And still, after two rounds of games, that trend has continued in the Premier League, with away teams winning 28 points so […]

By Brian Sears 8 December 2010 Of the 436 Premier League goals scored this season, 181 have come before half-time (or 42 per cent), leaving a sizeable chunk of 255 goals (58 per cent) in the second half. Most clubs – 15 from 20 – scored most of their goals (a majority) in the second […]

 By Brian Sears  19 August 2016 It was this time a year ago that we wrote that Chelsea’s title hopes were as good as gone after two games – purely from a statistical history point of view. Jose Mourinho’s team (as they were then) had lost both their opening games, and in the piece linked here we […]

By Brian Sears  12 August 2016 So the 25th Premier League season is about to start and we reckon that Hull and Watford have the trickiest starts. West Brom have it easiest, followed by Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United. By the end of August each club will have played three league games before the international break. One ‘objective’ […]

By Brian Sears  14 May 2016 Winning away from home is now officially a ‘thing’ in the Premier League. The trend has been inching towards better away performances for a few seasons now but the amount of points won on the road in 2015-16 is guaranteed to be at record levels no matter what happens on […]

By Brian Sears  6 May April 2016 Only three goalkeepers of the 45 who have played in the Premier League this season have played for every minute of every match and it seems appropriate that title-winner Kasper Schmeichel of Leicester City has the best record of those three. The 29-year-old Dane has appeared for every second of […]