The Guardian kindly sent me a copy of their guide to 2010-2011, The Season. The format is fairly strange, in that every team’s preview seems to be written by someone who hates that team. Think of those little WUMs you came across on BBC 606 before you wondered why you bothered going on there any more, and you’re along the right lines, although spelling is perfect and the vocabulary is obviously more impressive.

Of Chelsea, they say the club’s unofficial motto is ‘money can’t buy me love’, that their players are ‘gobby’ and claimed John Terry is ‘a symbol of everything that is wrong with football nowadays’. When talking of Liverpool, they refer to ‘Everton’s Jamie Carragher’, when talking about City mock the 34 years and mentioned SWP, saying ‘He just loves City – except when he left them for Chelsea’. I mean, the wind ups given are ones I would be proud of. Unfortunately, when talking about United it’s more of the same.

There’s an obsession with Juan Sebastian Veron, bizarrely mentioning his name five times and mocking the manager for forking out £28m for him, and even more bizarrely it describes Hernandez as someone who looks like he might have starred in Prisoner Cell Block H. Really? Does he?

But if you look past all that stuff, there’s some great little articles and, for a statto like me, some nice stats.

Here’s some of the interesting finds from that:

Total shots
Chelsea 627
United 515
Spurs 499
Arsenal 480
Liverpool 458

Goals to shots
City 18.3%
Arsenal 17.3%
United 16.7%
Chelsea 16.4%
Everton 14.5%

Goals in last 10 minutes
Chelsea 26
United 25
Arsenal 24
Spurs 18
City 15

Penalties taken
Chelsea 12
West Ham 9
Sunderland 9
United 8
Villa 8
Everton 8
Hull 8

Goals inside the box
Chelsea 94
United 77
Arsenal 65
City 63
Spurs 59

Goals outside the box
Arsenal 18
City 10
United 9
Chelsea 9
Fulham 9

Headed goals
Chelsea 16
Everton 16
United 14
West Ham 13
Villa 12
Spurs 12

Passing accuracy
Chelsea 82.9%
Arsenal 81.4%
United 80.32%
Liverpool 78.8%
Everton 75.6%

Goalscorers
Spurs 19
Arsenal 18
Hull 18
United 17

Players with assists
Everton 18
Chelsea 18
Arsenal 17
United 16
City 16