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GARY LEMKE’S FIVER: Big-spending Chelsea’s invoice, EPL Goals galore as Haaland adds to tally and more!

With the International break affecting all the major leagues, Gary Lemke has a look at some interesting angles and stats relating to the English Premiership that we can monitor from next week again.
Manchester City's Erling Haaland (right) scores
EPA/ Martin Rickett

With the International break affecting all the major leagues, Gary Lemke has a look at some interesting angles and stats relating to the English Premiership that we can monitor from next week again.

Two women looking excitedly at cellphone

Haaland Leads Magnificent Seven

Erling Haaland (who else?) is one of seven players to have scored five or more league goals across Europe since the season started. Haaland, the prolific Manchester City goal-scoring machine found the net 36 times last season. He is now already on six, after four of a potential 38 games. Kylian Mbappe (PSG) and Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid) are in the group of six players who have scored five goals.

Hard to Keep it Clean 

Goals seem to be the story of the EPL season so far, with only two clubs managing to keep a clean sheet more than once after four rounds. Only Ederson (Man City) and Guglielmo Vicario (Tottenham) have two clean sheets to their name, while eight other clubs have conceded goals in all their matches so far. They are West Ham (4th), Brighton (6th), Newcastle (14th), Bournemouth (16th), Sheffield United

For their next Trick

While on the subject of a lot of goals, when Son Heung-min (Tottenham vs Burnley), Erling Haaland (Man City vs Fulham) and Evan Ferguson (Brighton vs Newcastle) netted hat-tricks last week it was only the second time in English Premiership history that three players had scored hat-tricks on the same day. The previous occasion was in September 1995 when Robbie Fowler (Liverpool), Alan Shearer (Newcastle) and Tony Yeboah (Leeds) achieved the feat.

Same Year, Same Results

Like every other Chelsea support, it’s been a rough last two years, basically ever since the Ukraine-Russia war broke out and owner Roman Abramovich left the club. Despite new owner Todd Boehly spending alarmingly on new recruitments, Chelsea’s form is poor. In fact, that’s seen on an EPL table based on 2023 results alone. The Blues are 16th, with only Everton (17th) lower than them, considering Leicester, Leeds and Southampton were relegated to the Championship. The 1-17 is: 1 Man City (65pts), 2 Arsenal (51), 3 Liverpool, (49), 4 Aston Villa (49), 5 Man United (49), 6 Brighton (47), 7 Brentford (42), 8 Newcastle (40), 9 Tottenham (40), 10 West Ham (36), 11 Fulham (31), 12 Nottm Forest (31), 13 WolvEs (31), 14 Crystal Palace (30), 15 Bournemouth (25), 16 Chelsea (24), 17 Everton (22).

A Spent Force?

For all the talk about Chelsea’s spending, an audit of the last 10 seasons in Europe’s transfer windows show that they are only second on the table of nett amount outlayed (ins offset by outs). Over the past 10 years they’ve outlayed a nett £883m. That’s more than third-placed PSG (£866m), fourth-placed Arsenal (£745m), fifth-placed Man City (£732m) and sixth-placed Newcastle (£573m). Barcelona are at No7, AC Milan at No9, Juventus at No14, Bayern Munich at No18 and Real Madrid at No19. Have you guessed which club in Europe has spent the most? It’s Manchester United, with a nett outlay of £1.19-billion.

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