By Brian Sears  15 April 2016 Barring victory for Aston Villa this weekend combined with defeat for Norwich, then Villa’s relegation to the Championship will be confirmed as mathematical fact on Saturday. The seven ‘ever present’ clubs of the Premier League era will be six and we dealt with Villa’s demise here. You don’t need to go […]

By Brian Sears  1 April 2016 Leicester’s next assignment en route to a possible extraordinary coronation as champions of England is at home to Southampton on Sunday. It often seems as if flagging up a particular stat jinxes it*, but the Foxes have played 39 different opponents during their Premier League years and they have won more points […]

By Brian Sears  18 March 2016 St James’ Park hosts a north-east derby of particular significance this weekend as the outcome will swing the relegation scrap. Newcastle and Sunderland are both in the bottom four, respectively nine and eight points adrift of Swansea heading into the weekend. If Rafa Benitez can guide his charges to victory then they and […]

By Brian Sears  11 March 2016 The Premier League is in its 24th season since the 1992-93 breakaway in English football. Forty-seven different clubs have played in it since then. That’s more than half of the 92 clubs in the four professional divisions. It’s become a majority experience. Mobility continues to be a feature of England’s […]

By Brian Sears  4 March 2016 For the last 20 completed seasons the Premier League has had 20 teams and been played over 38 rounds. The eventual champions in all 20 of those seasons have been the club with the most points or second-most points from the first 28 games. The table below gives full details by […]

By Brian Sears  12 February 2016 Leicester’s extraordinary Premier League season is a breath of fresh air especially to fans of ‘smaller’ clubs who dream it might be possible, one day, for their club to copy. The scale of achievement, being widely discussed, can be put in further context by some figures that show a) the margin by […]

By Brian Sears  22 January 2016 Arsenal enter the weekend at the top of the Premier League table but here comes an acid test of their title credentials, a game against Chelsea. The Gunners’ recent record against Chelsea has been poor. Worse than poor. Awful. Wretched. Lousy. Miserable. Paltry. Or shocking, hopeless, inadequate, tortured (if you want to […]

By Brian Sears  15 January 2016 Many fans in the Premier League this season have had to come to terms with their teams finding it harder to gain points on home soil. The statistics show home wins are running at an all-time low, or 39 per cent of matches to be precise. The lowest home win percentage in any completed […]

By Brian Sears  31 December 2015 Of all the teams who spent any time in the four main divisions of English football in 2015, Burton, Arsenal and Middlesbrough were the standout performers in the calendar year. Those three clubs were the only three who amassed more than two points per game in the year, with Burton top […]

By Brian Sears 24 December 2015 Christmas is a time for reflection and a time to look forward and neither offers any merriment for Aston Villa. Ten points away from safety as things stand, they can look to no precedent in the Premier League era (the ‘monied’ era, since 1992) for a club with single-digit points at Christmas […]