Signor Mancini is known for moaning about this, that and the other and saying that United are or have this, that or the other. We are all used to this from him, and his apparent version of the mind games that SAF has made so famous.
All season, he has been saying that signing van Persie would win United the title, and now, he is saying he has been proven right.
BBC articles on the matter, with #2 being the main one: 1 2 3
Well, the BBC have calculated the effect of the top scorer factor in the Premier League, and rewritten the table based on how it would be without the goals of each club's top scorer. Has RVP really made that of a difference? Are Liverpool and especially Tottenham really one-man teams? How do the lower clubs with goals spread throughout the team fare? And is Michu truly the signing of the season?
Let's find out...
METHODOLOGY: If we take the game when Liverpool beat Norwich 5-2, Luis Suarez scored a hat-trick. So if you take his goals out, the game looks like a draw BUT Norwich's leading scorer Grant Holt also scored one goal for his side. This means the net score would have been 2-1 to Liverpool and Suarez's heroics resulted in a net contribution of zero points.
Code:
[B] Difference
P Team Pts Pos Pts[/B]
1 Man Utd 65 ±0 -19
2 Arsenal 58 +1 - 5
3 Man City 57 -1 -11
4 Chelsea 57 ±0 - 5
5 Everton 49 +1 - 7
6 Tottenham 46 -1 -15
7 Liverpool 42 ±0 - 9
8 West Ham 37 +2 - 5
9 West Brom 36 -1 - 9
10 Swansea 35 -1 - 7
11 Norwich 34 +2 - 4
12 Southampton 31 ±0 - 8
13 Stoke 31 +2 - 6
14 Newcastle 31 +2 - 6
15 Fulham 30 -4 -10
16 Sunderland 29 -2 - 8
17 Wigan 26 +1 - 5
18 Aston Villa 21 -1 -13
19 QPR 20 ±0 - 4
20 Reading 16 ±0 - 8
In other words, yes, RVP has made a huge difference - United lose more points than anyone else.
However, this would have been mostly early in the season when the defence didn't know where its own goal was, so a stronger defence akin to that seen in February and March would have drastically reduced this. And ultimately they still win anyway; just by a far smaller margin.
Notable beneficiaries include Arsenal, who are in the top two, Everton, who are in the Europa League spot (
), and Wigan, who are outside the drop zone. Notable losers include Tottenham, Fulham and Aston Villa; of these three clubs, two are known to depend on the services of one certain player. In other words, Tottenham are less of a force without Bale - and Villa are doomed without Benteke...
Interestingly, Michu doesn't make that much of a difference! Or rather, he doesn't until the next table is considered: The percentage values of goals scored by each club's top scorer...
Code:
[B] P Team Top Scorer Gls % Gls % Pts[/B]
1 Aston Villa Benteke 15 41.67 38.24
2 Swansea Michu 17 39.53 16.67
3 Liverpool Suarez 23 37.70 17.65
4 Tottenham Bale 18 31.03 24.59
5 Newcastle Ba 13 30.23 16.22
6 Man Utd van Persie 24 29.79 22.62
7 West Brom Lakaku 13 29.55 17.65
8 Southampton Lambert 14 28.95 20.51
9 Fulham Berbatov 13 27.02 25.00
10 Sunderland Fletcher 11 27.02 21.62
11 Wigan Kone 10 23.33 16.13
12 Reading Le Fondre 10 21.57 33.33
13 Stoke Walters 7 20.33 16.22
14 Everton Fellaini 11 18.46 12.50
15 Man City Dzeko 12 18.18 16.18
16 Arsenal Cazorla 12 17.50 7.94
17 QPR Remy 5 17.24 16.67
18 West Ham Nolan 7 17.24 11.90
19 Chelsea Lampard 12 17.24 8.06
20 Norwich Holt 5 15.15 10.53
Note that I have swapped West Ham and Chelsea on the basis that I am using points difference as a tie-breaker, whereas the BBC have no obvious tie-breaking criteria.
The most interesting point here is that most of the six European challengers are down the bottom end of the table. Does this prove United's dominance, or that they are more dependent on van Persie than other top teams on their top scorers? In my opinion, both are correct! One will also see just how high up Liverpool and Tottenham are, with their respective
cheats "stars" clearly making enormous differences to them.
Oh, and Newcastle fans: Hang your heads in shame.
but Newcastle had player sent off in 75th mins when score line was 5-0