The Guardian published their second annual Premier League ineptitude index. Unsurprisingly, Aston Villa topped the list. The other usual suspects were relegation threatened Newcastle and Norwich. Crystal Palace, Everton, Liverpool, and Tottenham are also guilty of self immolation. Spurs were decidedly “Spursy” against Chelsea and their bungling handed Leicester the title.
The eyebrow raisers include West Brom in second position. Surely a Tony Pulis side should at least be competent if boring. However, the Baggies were also guilty of being second on the list for most fixtures without scoring a goal, third worst at accurate (finding your team mate) throw ins, first in blowing two goal leads and losing, most penalty kicks missed, and worst record for dissent. Despite these adverse numbers, West Brom is squarely a mid table side. Similarly, Sunderland, another relegation battler which one would think make the Black Cats ineptitude frontrunners, actually rank low. Their biggest knock is the number of scoreless matches. Otherwise they are a fairly safe side.
The biggest surprise is Man Utd receiving accolades as least inept (Louis Van Gaal will celebrate). A side struggling to score goals and noted for their sterile possession? This is probably why the Guardian fails to capture the true extent of Utd’s ineptness. Since most of the statistics do not really weight attack, Utd come out better since they are quite foolproof at the back and do all the other things well include throw ins and pass to their own man in their half. However, it is a completely different story if you add the number of minutes/ percentage of possession to goals scored. Utd have averaged 55.5% possession (second best in the league) with just 43 goals (10th in the league) scored. In comparison, champions Leicester struck 21 goals more with about 12% less of the ball.
Utd’s nine draws feature 5 scoreless ones where they had 69% of the ball (Newcastle), 59% (Man City), Crystal Palace (55%), West Ham (63%), and Chelsea (67%). Their nine losses also feature the same pattern, moderate to huge advantages in domination against Swansea (65%), Arsenal (62%), Bournemouth (57%), Norwich (69%), Stoke (59%), Southampton (55%), Sunderland (66%), West Brom (53%), and Tottenham (53%). If you factor the type of possession, then you begin to get a fuller picture of the extent of sterility. Against Swansea, Utd had 65% of the possession but only 66% of the passes were forward compared to the Swans driving forward 70% of the times. This inferiority holds up against all other opponents.
The Guardian needs to give greater weight to attacking ineptitude, for e.g., how many teams had 55% of the ball but lost or drew or failed to score and assign points accordingly. The other statistic to uncover similar futility would be shots on goal to goals scored. Fans would get a truer picture of Utd and Arsenal in their ineptitude.