With the news breaking on both Arsenal & Manchester United official club websites that a fee had been agreed for Robin Van Persie we thought we’d put a very quick article together to show you how similar these two players are statistically. We’re not going to make any judgements about how they will play together because Sir Alex Ferguson would have thought about that long and hard before he pushed forward with a £24 million move for the 2011/12 Premier League Top Scorer.

The first graphic we want to show you is from our upcoming new section: Top Stats. This area will show you the top players for a range of statistics which you will be able to filter and sort to your heart’s content! (This will be available in the next few weeks so keep an eye out or subscribe to our Stats Centre!)

Only three goals between van Persie and Rooney plus the minutes per goal (MPG) very close too. The minutes per shot (MPS) is unbelievably similar whilst the Minutes per shot on target is just 0.1 of a minute different! Wow. Shooting accuracy (SA%) is the same and chance conversion (CC%) close too. The only difference is the clear-cut chance conversion % but I’m not sure Sir Alex or United fans will be worried about that.

Our tweet earlier on from our @EPLIndex twitter account:

United fans will have a cracker of a combination judging by our tweeted stats earlier. They hit 57 goals between them and had 13 assists. Yes they were in different teams and rarely does a strike duo score that amount – however if they did it would all but guarantee a 20th title to Old Trafford. It’s a scary thought for the rest of the league.

The fact is that despite van Persie’s age and injury record he’s in the form of his life and hasn’t been injured for over a year. This is also a fact that a lot of supporters are forgetting – it could be the match made in heaven and why shouldn’t people think of it as a positive? The two best strikers in the league are now playing in the same side – unthinkable a year ago.

The table below has some more analysis from our upcoming Top Stats area which shows where Rooney and van Persie aren’t so similar – i.e. where they score their goals from.

Pretty self-explanatory – percentages of their goals for where they score their goals from?

LF% – Percentage via Left Foot, RF% – Right Foot, HD% – Head, OP% – Other body Part, IB% – inside box, OB% – outside Box and PN% – goals via Penalty!

Rooney with a high percentage from his right foot whilst van Persie seems to score with either foot and Rooney also gets more with his head too. The stats also show that van Persie is more of a predator in the box with 93% goals from that area whilst Rooney almost strikes with a fifth of his goals coming from outside of the 18 yard box. Rooney also scores a higher percentage via penalties – a whopping 22%.

We hope you enjoyed the brief analysis – we would appreciate any comments and please do share the article if you are impressed with the similarities shown in the first table!