Who is the greatest side in Premier League history?
That question has been asked throughout the 2019/20 season as Liverpool smashed all sorts of records to establish a 25 point lead at the top of the table.
Of course, the greatest club in Premier League history is Manchester United with the Red Devils having claimed the title 13 times.
But they never went an entire campaign unbeaten - like Arsenal. And they reached 100 points - like Manchester City.
So, the UK’s most trusted sports insurance provider, Insure4Sport, decided to carry out extensive research to rank every Premier League winning side from worst to best.
To do so, they used 24 performance metrics and ranked all previous 27 winners - plus this season's champions elect Liverpool - from worst to best in a brilliant study.
We'll let them explain exactly how they did it:
- We’ve taken all 27 teams to have won the Premier League (plus this season’s champion elect, Liverpool) and analysed each of them based on 24 different performance categories. For example: goals scored, clean sheets, points-per-game.
- We’ve given each team a ranking from 1 to 28 in each category, with one being the best and 28 being the worst. For example, the Manchester City title-winning team of 2017/18 scored a record 106 goals in the league, hence it gets a number one ranking in the ‘goals scored’ category. By contrast, the Manchester United team of 1992/93 scored the lowest amount of goals of any Premier League champion, hence it gets a ranking of 28.
Forget about opinions, you simply can't argue with stats. The numbers have been crunched and here are the results:
28th | Manchester United 1996/97
The worst side to have ever won the Premier League. They may have had Eric Cantona but United amassed just 75 points, won only 21 games and conceded 44 goals during their 38 matches.
27th | Arsenal 1997/98
One year later, Arsenal only managed 78 points. Arsene Wenger's side registered the worst away goal difference (2), and second worst away goals per game tally (1.32) of any Premier League winning team.
26th | Blackburn Rovers 1994/95
Eighty-nine points is a decent tally - albeit in a 42 game season. But Rovers lost seven times during this campaign - the most suffered by a title winning side.
25th | Manchester United 1992/93
United beat Aston Villa and Norwich to the first Premier League trophy. But just 24 wins in 42 matches, scoring just 67 goals meant it was far from convincing.
24th | Manchester United 1998/99
The treble winners are only the 24th best title winning side. No, really.
They may have won the FA Cup and Champions League but they picked up 79 points on course to their Premier League triumph - the third worst tally of all past champions. They only won 22 of their 38 games and pipped Arsenal to the trophy by a solitary point.
They did win an unprecedented treble though.
23rd | Leicester City 2015/2016
Yep, Leicester were better than United’s treble winners. N’Golo Kante, Riyad Mahrez, Jamie Vardy and co. only lost three games during their incredible 5000/1 feat.
22nd | Manchester United 2002/2003
The first of a run of four United sides in a row in this table.
2002/03 was the year Ruud van Nistelrooy fired them to glory and 83 points - five clear of Arsenal. But a 47% away win record and just 13 clean sheets has proven costly.
21st | Manchester United 1995/1996
The season Kevin Keegan had a meltdown as United overturned a 12-point deficit to pip Newcastle on the final day of the season.
But six defeats and seven draws suggests this wasn’t a vintage United title-winning side.
20th | Manchester United 2010/2011
Dimitar Berbatov was brilliant during the 2010/11 campaign but the Red Devils only won five away games and conceded 37 goals.
They did finish nine points clear of Chelsea, though.
19th | Manchester United 2000/2001
An 80-point haul is below average but they did finish 10 points clear of their nearest challengers, Arsenal.
18th | Arsenal 2001/02
This Arsenal side finished the season with 13 consecutive league wins to clinch the title, only losing three all campaign.
However, they have the worst home goals conceded per game tally, home goal difference and home points per game of any Premier League title winning team. They also have the second worst home win % (63) and joint-worst loss % (16).
17th | Manchester United 2012/2013
United have Robin van Persie to thank for winning the league in 2012/13.
Ignore his 26 league goals and you’ll see Sir Alex Ferguson’s side - in the Scot's final season - conceded 43 goals in 38 games. They also lost three at home - the joint worst number of any side to win the Premier League.
They did win the title with 89 points and were 11 clear of Man City.
16th | Manchester United 1993/94
The double-winning side consisting of Cantona, Mark Hughes, Ryan Giggs and Andrei Kanchelskis managed 92 points and scored 80 goals during their 42-match season.
But they only averaged 1.86 goals per game at home, winning less than 70% of them.
15th | Chelsea 2014/15
Jose Mourinho’s side score highly on their defensive qualities - conceding just nine goals at home and losing three times.
But only 26 wins from 38 points and just 73 goals scored means The Special One’s lack of attacking intent see them miss out on a top half finish in this table.
