The best and worst Premier League winning teams of all time

Which Premier League winning team is the greatest of all time? What numbers do you need to hit to win the Premier League? 

We’ve crunched 33 years of data to find out. 

Our scoring system explained

• We’ve taken every Premier League winning side and analysed each of them based on 11 different performance categories. For example: goals scored, clean sheets, points-per-game.
• We’ve given each team a ranking across each category, with the highest overall points scored relating to the best performances. 

This system has thrown up some incredible results, with certain teams a lot lower down the table than you might expect. Let’s look at the final table…

Which Premier League winning team is the greatest ever?

The Manchester City 2017/18 team is statistically the best ever to win the Premier League. This team achieved 100 points, scored 106 goals, won 32 games from 38 and finished 19 points clear of second place. It also won 18 consecutive matches, gained an amazing 2.63 points per game away from home and scored an eye-watering 3.21 goals per game at the Etihad. Yes, per game.

Whilst Manchester City’s position won’t shock many football fans, the position of the treble-winning Manchester United team surely will. This Red Devils team finishes fifth bottom, below Leicester’s title-winning team of 2016, based on our data. The Foxes scored more points, won more games, conceded fewer goals and finished nine points further ahead of second place than the 1999 heroes.

And despite going an entire season unbeaten, the Arsenal ‘Invincibles’ team of 2003/04 is statistically only the tenth best side to win the Premier League. That’s not even high enough for a UEFA Cup spot! This team drew nearly a third of its matches and scored fewer goals than 19 other teams to win the Premier League. 

Only one Manchester United team made the top 10 – the 2007/08 side. This side conceded the fewest number of goals at home out of every team to win the Premier League, letting in just seven goals in 19 games, and has the joint second-best record (along with Chelsea 2005/06) for goals conceded.

What are the highs and lows of the Premier League?

When you’re comparing champions over 33 years, you’re going to stumble across some fluctuating data. After all, no one team is the same.

Let’s look at some of the most – and least – impressive numbers which have been achieved by Premier League winning teams of the past. 

Points

Manchester City’s record points total in 2017/18 is 13 points higher than the average achieved by a Premier League winning team. The Centurions reached 87 points with five games to spare, which puts their dominance into perspective. 

The lowest ever points tally of a title-winning side was recorded by Manchester United in 1996/97. This team won 21 games overall and fewer than two-thirds of its home matches.

Wins

When it comes to victories, Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City side has proved the most ruthless, winning 32 games two seasons on the trot. Not only did the 2017/18 side win 18 straight games, but the 2018/19 team won its last 14 consecutive matches. Talk about consistency.

Liverpool's 2019/20 league winning team also achieved the highest ever total of 32 wins. Much of this success can be put down to Jürgen Klopp's philosophy of 'gegenpressing' - a strategy which paid dividends throughout the season. The dynamism and fitness levels of his squad were enough to rival Manchester City's remarkable run of form in the two seasons prior.

The only other team to reach at least 30 wins was Antonio Conte’s Chelsea 2016/17 side. At the time, this team’s number of wins was a Premier League record, and this feat is made all the more remarkable by the fact that it won only three of its first six games. Following a 3-0 defeat by Arsenal early in the season, it won 27 of its next 32 matches as Conte’s 3-4-3 formation reaped rewards.

In an amazing parallel to the aforementioned Manchester City teams, Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea sides of 2004/05 and 2005/06 also achieved the same number of wins two years in a row. The 2005/06 team won a then-record nine consecutive games at the start of the season, which culminated in another then-record of 17 wins from the first 19 games.

Defeats

No surprises for guessing which team recorded the fewest defeats of any Premier League winning team. The ‘Invincibles’ didn’t lose a Premier League game between May 2003 and October 2004, and Arsenal’s 49-game unbeaten run is still a record in the English football league’s 132-year history.

By contrast, the Blackburn Rovers side of 1994/95 holds the record for the most defeats suffered by a Premier League winning team. Kenny Dalglish’s Rovers lost seven games that season, including three of their final five matches, almost doing a Devon Loch as Sir Alex Ferguson suggested they would need to in order not to win the league! (If you’re unfamiliar with the famous Devon Loch story, here you go).

What does an average Premier League winning side look like?

The average team to lift the Premier League trophy wins 26 of its games. The Arsenal 2001/02 side won exactly this many games, as did the ‘Invincibles’ and the 2014/15 Chelsea team.

88 is the average number of points gained by a Premier League winning team. However, this number may rise in the years to come. The most recent teams to win the Premier League have achieved more than 90 points, and this will continue to be the norm.

Despite ‘Squeaky Bum Time’ being a popular football term, our stats show that there’s rarely much of that when it comes to the title race. On average, a team which wins the Premier League finishes seven points clear of second place, meaning it wins the league with at least two games to spare.

Unsurprisingly, goals are a key currency for any Premier League winning side, with an average champion scoring 83 goals – more than two goals per game. It also keeps 17 clean sheets.

How have Premier League stats changed over the years?

Back in the 90s, if a team got more than 80 points, it stood a decent chance of winning the Premier League. Although the average is 83, this figure is skewed slightly by the fact that Manchester United achieved a then-record 92 points in the 1993/94 season.

Come the 00s, the bar was raised significantly, as more money crept into the game and the world’s best talent arrived on these shores. From 2000 to 2009, a team needed five more points on average across the season to win the Premier League.

In the 2010s and since, it’s been more of the same, as standards have increased ever so slightly. An average Premier League winning team between 2010 and 2019 picked up 89 points. And since the start of the 2020s, it's now commonplace for teams to need more than 90 points to win the league.

Three decades ago, the average team to win the Premier League won 24, or 60%, of its games. This figure is staggering when you consider that, until 1995/96, there were 42 matches per Premier League season instead of 38, as there were more teams.

By the 00s, wins became a much more important commodity. During this period, a team needed three more wins across the season on average if it wanted to win the Premier League title.

From 2010 onwards, 28 wins have become the benchmark. This is not necessarily make or break if you look back over the whole period – Leicester City in 2015/16 and Manchester United 2010/11 managed to win the Premier League with only 23 victories. However, this is unlikely to happen again any time soon.

This is the area of football which has changed most drastically over the last 30 years. From 1992 to 1999, a team that won the Premier League scored 75 goals. That’s fewer than two goals per game.

Over the course of the next decade, the average number of goals grew to 78, as the likes of Thierry Henry, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Cristiano Ronaldo and Didier Drogba took the Premier League by storm.

Since 2010, we’ve seen a complete step change in English football when it comes to goals scored. During that decade, Premier League winning teams scored 89 goals on average, with this increasing to a whopping 93 goals since 2020.

What do these stats tell us?

That today’s Premier League champions have very little margin for error. Settling for a draw doesn’t cut it anymore – a team often needs to go for broke or it risks missing out on the title. 

The huge increase in the number of goals scored by an average Premier League winning team may come as a surprise to football fans, especially when you consider that Alan Shearer and Andy Cole were scoring more than 30 goals a season.

Do these numbers hint at football becoming less about a team relying on a number nine to bang in the goals and more about attacking contributions from across the pitch? Do they highlight the changing role of a midfielder in terms of goal output? Is football today less defensive and more hell for leather?

It’s also worth considering that football was more physical and defensive back in the 90s, making it more difficult for certain attacking players to flourish.

But one thing’s for certain – no matter which era or team you refer to, winning the Premier League has never been an easy feat. A few geniuses have just made it look easy along the way.

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