If Fulham feel hard done by their 19th-place finish and relegation last season, the Luck Index would tend to agree. It says they should have had an additional five points last season, which would have been enough to leapfrog Cardiff and Brighton in the adjusted table. (Both of those sides were extraordinarily fortunate to get an extra seven and eight points respectively through good fortune.) Viewed through that lens, Brighton's decision to part ways with manager Chris Hughton despite staying up makes a bit more sense.

Sergio Aguero was robbed

Luck also played a massive part in the race of the Golden Boot, which was shared by Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, each scoring 22 goals. Apply the Luck Index adjustments and the two Liverpool strikers lose four goals each, while Aubameyang loses a whopping eight. (The Arsenal striker paid a price for deflected goals, incorrectly awarded goals and converting incorrectly awarded penalties).

Check out the table:

All of this means we would have had a different top scorer last season: Sergio Aguero, whom the Luck Index stripped of only one goal, leaving him on 20 (rather than the 21 he had in reality).

Incidentally, there might be something to the old cliché whereby strikers make their own luck: each of the top eight goal scorers in the Premier League had goals taken away by the Luck Index.

This may be the point at which you wonder how on earth Dr. Curran and his team determine whether an incident was lucky/unlucky and what impact it might have had on a result. In this year's Luck Index, four types of incidents were considered: red-card incidents (both for players that should not have been sent off and players that should have been), penalty incidents (again, both those incorrectly given as well as those incorrectly not given), goals that were incorrectly disallowed (either by an errant offside or a nonexistent foul in the build-up) and deflected goals.

For the three categories of incident related to officiating errors, a panel that included qualified referees made the determination. There had to be consensus for the incident to be considered an error. The panel made a judgement call with regard to the deflected goal: only shots where the deflection played a key role, either in redirecting the ball on target or in misdirecting the keeper were considered.