By Brian Sears
10 February 2012
The Premier League remains on course for a second successive season of record scoring.
In 240 games so far in 2011-12, which equates to 63 per cent of the season played, there have been 677 goals, or an average of 2.82 goals per game.
If that level is maintained, it would yield a total of 1,072 goals, or nine more than the 1,063 record of last season.
Month-by-month scoring and club-by-club scoring is displayed in the graphic below.
Manchester has been a city united by a deluge of scoring. City have scored 63 goals and United have scored 59 so far, ahead of games respectively against Aston Villa and Liverpool this weekend.
Goal scoring this season has included 13 hat-tricks, with three players – Rooney, Ba and Van Persie – each claiming two trebles apiece so far.
The record total of 17 hat-tricks in a season (again from last season) is well within the strikers’ collective sights. A note of caution should be sounded, however; the nine hat-tricks up to the end of October, after 99 games played, have dwindled to four in 141 games played since.
Some teams have no trouble finding the net only to be damaged by dodgy defending. That’s you, Blackburn Rovers.
Blackburn are at No8 in the season’s rankings for goals scored (see graphic below) but lie 19th in the table because of their shocking record of conceding.
Steve Kean’s side have notched up an incredible double of scoring in every away game this season and yet conceding in every single game, home and away.
One might say that Rovers have made the worst of their good scoring record.
On the flip side, Stoke have made the best of their poor scoring record: they are ranked 19th in goals scored but lie 12th in the table, seven places higher.
Everton (six places higher in the real table than the scoring table) and Liverpool (five) are also making the most of relatively meagre scoring returns.
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