The old adage for teams fighting relegation is that you need
a goalscorer to keep you up. After all, goals win games. It is this idea which
has led Leicester City to splash out on Krameric and Ulloa for a combined fee
of a reported £17million, and to Sunderland spending £6million plus large wages
on an ageing Jermain Defoe. The stats however, suggest that there is a definite
over emphasis on buying strikers.
If this season’s premier league ended with the current
bottom 3 going down, then the last 5 seasons will have seen the 3 sides who
scored the least each season going down just 7 times. That shows, that more
than 1 in 2 sides who are battling against the drop scored less than a team
that stayed up ahead of them. In contrast, the teams who have conceded the highest
number of goals have gone down on 12 occasions, reflecting that it is the
defences which are most crucial to premier league survival. Perhaps recruitment
teams should look at statistics and not take notice of old clichés.
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