Five things you’ve forgotten about the Premier League

Five things you’ve forgotten about the Premier League

Remember the Premier League? It was like a tribal version of the Bundesliga but with higher wages. Nothing? Well, let us remind you.

AS the Premier League slowly inches its way back to some sort of playing existence, we have to contend with the fact that its most recent shot (Marc Albrighton for Leicester against Aston Villa, shot fans) is closer to 2019 than it is to now.

There’s never been such a gap in a football season, not even the semi-legendary German winter break, so you’d be forgiven for forgetting quite a lot of things about 2019-20. If that’s the case then fear not because here’s a handy reminiscipackage about some aspects of the campaign so far:

If You Want To Be A Record Breaker

Sporting world records are going to be very thin on the ground in 2020 but Trent Alexander-Arnold only needs one more assist in Liverpool’s remaining games to break his own Guinness-authenticated landmark for a defender in a single season, set in 2018-19 when he crafted 12 goals for the Premier League runners-up.

With set-piece routines likely to be an even more prized asset in a reconstituted Premier League world where fitness levels are understandably lower, the nominal right-back is almost certain to add at least one more, and may have an outside chance of challenging the Premier League record of 20, set by Thierry Henry in 2002-03. Realistically, Kevin De Bruyne, currently on 16, has a better shot, but Alexander-Arnold keeps doing the unexpected, so who knows?

Golden Boot: Kane is able?

One familiar aspect of recent top-flight seasons has been Harry Kane’s robotic propensity to end the season with a boatload of goals to either cement or save his position in the Golden Boot race (an astonishing seven goals in the space of four days in May 2017 being the prime example). The Tottenham man was essentially ruled out for the rest of the season when he was injured against Southampton on New Year’s Day but no-one factored in the Covid-delay and now he’s back in training. So although Kane lies eight goals behind leader Jamie Vardy as it stands, he theoretically has nine games to close the gap. He couldn’t, could he?

Pen Utd

If Kane is to make an impact on the goalscoring charts he’ll need a few penalties, so it’s a pity he is not a Manchester United player. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team have been awarded 10 already this season and are only three short of the Premier League record held by Crystal Palace in 2004-05 (remember Andy Johnson?) and Leicester in 2015-16 (remember… ok you do).

You might be sat there now, going “yeah, yeah, it’s Manchester United, of course they get penalties” but that hasn’t always been the case. In 2000-01 they won the league at a canter but were awarded only three all season; it’s very much been a more recent development, with 12 they were given last season the current club record. Everton, meanwhile, haven’t been given a single one since March 2019: in the glittering world of penalty taking, equality remains a long way off.

Clinic

The band Clinic used to take the stage wearing surgical face masks and if you’re wondering whether this is a way to talk about clinical players in the Premier League in the season affected by the Coronavirus then yes, it is. There are myriad ways to judge this but if we look at players who are yet to see a shot on target do anything other than hit the back of the net then we surface Chelsea’s Jorginho who has a record of 4/4 [twice as good as the Clinic song 2/4 in other words].

Three of Jorginho’s have been penalties but it’s a strong output nonetheless. And if we’re talking about the ‘European midfielders who are undeniably classy but rarely get inside the box except for penalties’ scene then it must be time for an update of Ruben Neves’ Premier League attacking numbers, so it’s my pleasure to reveal that as it stands, in lockdown, the Wolves man has still only ever had four touches in the opposition penalty box in his English top-flight career, with two of those being (successfully converted) penalties. In football terms, Neves only goes to the shop when he absolutely has to, and in the current climate we must applaud that.

Bruno

Reports this week suggested that Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes had returned to training in peak condition so we can expect the Portuguese midfielder to mirror the way he hit the ground running when he joined the club in January. Three assists in his first five Premier League games matches Juan Mata and Angel Di Maria’s fine starts at the club, though the latter man would add only five more in his one season at United, a warning that a good start doesn’t always translate into long-term success.

The only player in United’s Premier League history to create more goals in his first five matches than Fernandes is Ashley Young, who racked up five in his first five matches. Even the biggest of Ashley Young loyalists, though, will concede that two of them in United’s 8-2 win against Arsenal involved little more than stopping the ball with his studs so Wayne Rooney could curl home. Even so, only 12 players in the competition’s history have assisted more goals than Young so in terms of longevity and quantity, Fernandes would do well to try and emulate the man now earning a living at Inter.

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