When you’re sitting in the pub with your mates, picking your favourites of the Premier League, the one position that has to be the hardest to choose a winner for is the right-back. It is not in any way as easy as left-back, with Ashley Cole usually taking that spot, and Leighton Baines coming through [...]

Teams that can hit you on the counter attack at any moment are incredibly hard to defend against, especially when speed merchants such as Gareth Bale and Theo Walcott are running at your defence. So which teams have impressed in the counter attack and how have they been so successful? We can start to answer [...]

It is a sight no football fan wants to see.  The dreaded ‘R’ next to your club in the league table. It is incredibly difficult for fans to prepare themselves for the emotions that they go through when relegation from the Premier League is sealed.  Anger, frustration and even relief are just some of the [...]

This week Martin Lewis has a scouting report on Aston Villa. This will not only be interesting for Aston Villa supporters but also Manchester United supporters before the big game on Sunday. In fact supporters of any club that are yet to play Aston Villa this season will find this in-depth tactical and statistical analysis [...]

With the Premier League now entering the last 10 games of the season it is the perfect time to use statistics to draw conclusions about why your team produced success/failure. Last week my focus was on chance conversion rate. This week the focus is on crossing accuracy. The table directly below portrays the total crosses performed [...]

Of course, I don’t need to tell you that the more chances a team creates the more likely they are of scoring. But do the teams creating the most chances score the most goals? The stats below show the chance conversion rate for each individual team. Not surprisingly, top of the league Manchester United also [...]

Most football fans recognize Liverpool winger Stewart Downing as one of the biggest transfer flops in Anfield history. Bought from Aston Villa for around £20 million in 2011, Downing was a part of  Kenny Dalglish’s FSG financed summer spending spree that included the purchases of Jordan Henderson, Charlie Adam, and Brazilian goalkeeper Doni. Downing, along [...]

This article looks at how well each Premier League team has fared against the teams in the top half and the bottom half of the league this season. We take a look at which teams have taken the most points against the teams in the top half, as well as which teams have scored and [...]

Dribbling is a much-admired skill in football. The best in the game are fixed into the history of the sport: players like Stanley Matthews, George Best and Diego Maradona are remembered for their almost superhuman ability to leave defenders trailing in their wake. Beating defenders one-on-one excites a crowd in a way only shots and [...]

This article takes a look at which teams are creating the most clear-cut chances this season; which teams make the most of these chances; and which teams are the most reliant on clear-cut chances to score their goals. A clear-cut chance can be defined as a situation where a player should reasonably be expected to [...]