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 [...]

Over the last day both Matt Jarvis and Victor Moses have had transfers agreed for them by their respective clubs Wolves and Wigan. The projected deals are worth £10.75m and £9m which raised a few eyebrows, especially on Twitter yesterday with everyone saying that West Ham would be paying over the top for Jarvis with [...]

Last week we looked at which players were “fouled” the most in the Premier League according to the Opta Stats from our EPLIndex Stats Centre so today we thought we’d do a quick review of the “dirtiest” players in the Premier League, i.e. those players that concede the most fouls. Firstly let’s have a look [...]

In some recent interviews, Simon Kuper has suggested that Liverpool established a data-driven style of play focussed around crossing last season. He theorised that Liverpool attempted to cater to Andy Carroll’s heading strengths by buying players with good crossing statistics, such as Stewart Downing and Jordan Henderson. Kuper then goes on to state that such an approach [...]

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 [...]