This was written after the first 12 games of United’s EPL season, and before the away league match vs Watford.

We all know the league table. 4th place is where we are, 2 points behind City and Arsenal and 1 point behind Leicester. We have conceded the least amount of goals in the league (8), but scored less than 7 teams and they are West Ham, Leicester, Tottenham, Everton, Southampton, City and Arsenal. We have the 4th highest goal difference (+9), behind City, Arsenal and Tottenham. But lets look at some other statistics that may be interesting.

Stats are taken from Whoscored. Whenever you see a number in brackets, like (2), it means the team is ranked 2nd in the league in that item/statistic.

Possession

Pretty self explanatory, United have the highest possession average per match, and 3rd highest pass success % in the whole league.

Passes

The two stats that stand out the most are long balls per game where only Watford (81), Leicester (72), and West Ham (72) do more long balls than we do, and that we are in the bottom half of the table for crosses per game which is probably down to our lack of options to aim at in the box and our lack of pace on the wings required to beat a full back and put a ball into the box.

Action zones

The only team that spends less time than us in their own half is City. Only City and Liverpool spend more time than us in the opponent’s half. Out of the big teams we spend the most amount of time in the middle, probably due to lack of pace/runners behind the opposition defence for us to play a quick forward pass to.

Attack

We our among the lowest when its comes to % of our attacks down the right side probably due to Mata playing RW even though he is slow, and unable to beat a full back without support from our right back. We are the highest in the league in % of attacks down the left side due to this being our only flank that has consistently had pacy players all season. Most of the time whenever Mata gets the ball on the right, the attack stalls and the ball is passed around till we get it to our left flank before we try to put the ball in the box. We can see that from the next statistic.

Only 15% of our shots come from our right flank compared to 21% from our left flank.

This shows how bad we are at penetrating an opponents defence because half our shots come from outside the box and only Norwich, Watford and Swansea have a higher %

Only Sunderland, Stoke, Newcastle and West Brom have fewer shots per game than us. We spend the 3rd most amount of time in the opponents half in the whole league, but we clearly struggle to get into the penalty box and even find it hard to get shots away from outside the box.

In terms of shot accuracy, we are around the same ball park as our rivals.

Nothing much to say.

Not enough quality service from the wings and corners. Not enough pace to make through balls viable because I think we do have the passers to put a ball in a good area. Arsenal leads key passes from free kicks by a landslide thanks to Ozil.

When you look at the goals from open play stat, it doesn’t look so bad being only 3 goals behind Arsenal. But of course, it is the lack of chances created that is what the complaints this season are all about.

Defence

Despite Shaw’s injury, our left side has still been able to prevent attacks due to Rojo performing well at LB, having a pacy player at LW to help cover the LB, and having Schneiderlin playing mostly on the left side of central midfield. Despite buying Darmian, our right side still faces more attacks than the left because we dont have a sitting midfielder on the right side of midfield, RB constantly rotated/dropped, and Mata not having the pace to cover for the RB as we can see in the Everton match when LVG brought on Lingard for Mata in the second half to cover the runs of Galloway (Everton’s LB).

It is weird how we have conceded the least amount of goals in the league, but most of the shots we let our opponents take is from inside our penalty box.

The only team that concedes less shots than us is City. The weird thing is we foul more than we get fouled, but the opposite is true for City and Arsenal.

We aren’t as reliant on De Gea as we were last season, but he is still important for us. Only City, Southampton, Bournemouth and Liverpool make less saves per game than we do. Our keeper has to make significantly more saves per game than City, despite us conceding less shots than anyone other than City, and yet City’s defence has conceded only one more goal than us.

Conclusion

Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Just interesting to look at the numbers and get a different view on things.