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 [...]

Looking at last season’s data, we can see what seems like a radical change when we compare the graph with that of four years previous. The ‘tail’ of the correlation has disappeared completely and the entire line seems to be moving towards something more linear. This is the effect of teams such as Wigan, and more [...]

In this article, I will be moving on from the 2008/09 season (Part 1) to look for some similarities or trends. In the 2009/10 season there is a similar curve in the line of best fit, and teams that are relegated could be accused of being inefficient. However, there is the beginning of a change in [...]

Goal scoring is a skill. Players who can create something from nothing, providing a timely tally for their side, are frequently the difference between one and three points. Players like Robin van Persie — 92 chances created in 2011-12 season — can provide a spark with the ball at their feet and a lethal final [...]

Brad Friedel is a survivor. The American international has started every Premier League match for his club side since the start of the 2004-05 season with Blackburn Rovers and holds the EPL record for most consecutive appearances – a run he maintained  through moves to Aston Villa and Tottenham. He played for the United States Men’s [...]

Failure to beat Wigan Athletic at Ewood Park in the penultimate match of the season condemned Blackburn Rovers to relegation to the Championship. For only the second time in the Premier League era Rovers will endure life in the second tier of English football next season, but where did it all go wrong for Rovers? [...]

A tense Friday night in Kiev for both sets of fans, both Sweden and England knew that a positive result here was vital. England had never beaten Sweden in a competitive encounter, drawing five and losing two of the seven matches, reason for Swedish fans to be optimistic despite their poor performance against Ukraine. With [...]

It is a common belief with Premier League owners that sacking your manager will improve their clubs results, but is this really that case? We look at whether teams sacking their manager has a short-term or a long-term impact on their side and whether it was better off sticking with the manager they had in [...]

With our goalkeeper, defence and midfield already chosen for the Premier League team of the year (http://www.eplindex.com/14737/premier-league-team-year-1112-opta-stats-part-2-midfield.html) we now look at which two strikers made the line up and announce our final team. We have done this by comparing players for each position using Opta statistics from the 2011/2012 season. We have then awarded 5 [...]

Inevitably there are those players who, despite seeing their team drop down to the Championship, will find themselves playing in the Premier League next season. For some, it is a matter of financials as their old club needs the proceeds to offset the loss of revenue. For others it is that their skill simply can [...]