Stat, Viz, Quiz: Is Cole Palmer the Best Player in the Premier League?

Stat, Viz, Quiz is the Opta Analyst football newsletter. This week’s edition looks at the Champions League, Cole Palmer, and the worst Championship campaigns.

You can tell the weather is changing now that we’re into October. Every single time poor Cole Palmer was pictured on Saturday he was clearly freezing, shivering away as he rubbed his shoulders time and again.

Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact the Chelsea man could not stop scoring in their win over Brighton & Hove Albion, before performing his trademark – albeit slightly trite if we’re being brutally honest – goal celebration.

Palmer’s four goals at the weekend were the latest examples of his tremendous form, and we closely inspect his impressive output in this week’s newsletter, while also looking ahead to the next round of UEFA Champions League fixtures.

Our latest quiz also has a European flavour, while we have an Ask Opta question that takes us to the Championship, looking particularly at those who have struggled in England’s second tier in recent years.

Let’s get cracking with the best competition in European club football.

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STAT – The Chaaaampions… But Not Yet

This week sees the second round of games in the new-fangled UEFA Champions League. Know precisely how it works yet? Us neither, but it’s all very exciting.

Arguably the pick of the Matchday 2 games comes at the Emirates Stadium as Arsenal host Paris Saint-Germain in what promises to be a high-quality clash in north London.

Arsenal may not have won the Premier League title in recent years, but it hasn’t been for a lack of trying, being agonisingly denied in the last two seasons by Manchester City. Mikel Arteta has had the Gunners playing some of the most effective football in Europe in that time, though, and they’ll be put to the test by the French champions on Tuesday.

Interestingly, though, this will be a battle between the two teams to have played the most games in the Champions League without winning it. Arsenal have played 188 games in the competition but the closest they have come to lifting the trophy was their final defeat to Barcelona in 2006, while PSG have played 150 Champions League games, also reaching one final, which they lost to Bayern Munich in 2020.

Also in the top five in the list of teams to have played the most Champions League games without winning the competition are Lyon (136), Benfica (133) and while Atlético Madrid are joint-fifth with Olympiakos (128), they will overtake the Greek side this week when they play Benfica.

The eagle-eyed of you (pun fully intended) will be screaming at your screen that Benfica have actually won the competition. Well, yes and no. The Portuguese giants won back-to-back European Cups in 1961 and 1962, but the numbers above are just for the Champions League era (since 1992-93).

Incorporating the European Cup era, Arsenal are still the team with the most appearances without ultimate success (198), while Dynamo Kyiv (184), Atlético (167), Anderlecht (158) and Galatasaray (157) follow in the top five.

Will Arsenal or PSG end their unwanted streaks this season? A victory at the Emirates for either side on Tuesday would give them the confidence to believe they can.

Read our data-led match preview for Arsenal vs PSG here.

VIZ – Potent Palmer

Viz by Jonathan Manuel

Brighton are a good team. They went into their game with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Saturday still unbeaten under new boss Fabian Hürzeler, who will never not make us feel old for having the audacity to be a 31-year-old Premier League manager.

And yet, not only was their undefeated start ended by the Blues, but they will have come away feeling like Cole Palmer single-handedly pushed them in the mud and stole their lunch money, such was the way he bullied the Seagulls.

Palmer hit four goals against Brighton, all of which arrived in a hectic first half in west London. He became the first player in Premier League history to score four goals before half-time in a single match, and the second Chelsea player to score four goals in two different Premier League games, after Frank Lampard in 2008 (against Derby) and 2010 (against Aston Villa).

He didn’t waste any time either. With just 19 minutes and 57 seconds between Palmer’s first and fourth goals, only Jermain Defoe (for Tottenham vs Wigan in November 2009) has ever scored four Premier League goals in a quicker time in the competition (17min 56s).

Having already hit the post and had a goal disallowed for offside, Palmer found his range as he scored four times before the break, including a penalty that made him just the second player in Premier League history to have taken at least 10 spot kicks and convert them all (behind only Yaya Toure, 11/11). He also bent a delicious free-kick past Bart Verbruggen as football began to look like the easiest thing in the world when Palmer was in possession.

After an excellent first campaign at Chelsea following his move from Manchester City last summer in which he recorded 33 Premier League goal involvements (22 goals and 11 assists) in 34 games, Palmer is already on course to beat that number, and possibly even the league’s all-time goal involvement record in a single campaign.

With 10 goal involvements (six goals and four assists) in just six league games in 2024-25, Palmer is on course to get over 60 this season, albeit we don’t necessarily expect him to maintain this rate up until May. The record for most goal involvements in a Premier League season hasn’t been broken in almost 30 years.

Andrew Cole set it in 1993-94 with 47 for Newcastle United, before Alan Shearer equalled it a year later in 1994-95 for Blackburn Rovers. Both recorded 34 goals and 13 assists in those respective seasons, though both were in 42-game league seasons.

The joint-holders of the record in 38-game seasons with 44 each are Thierry Henry (24 goals and 20 assists in 2002-03) and Erling Haaland (36 goals and 8 assists in 2022-23).

Can Palmer be the man to break the record? On current form you wouldn’t put it past him.

We should point out that Man City’s Erling Haaland is also on 10 goal involvements after six games, but all 10 of those have been goals and the Norwegian phenom is already hogging all the other records right now, so let’s allow Palmer to have this one for the time being.

QUIZ – Champions League Queries

As a change of pace, we’re giving you a Champions League quiz this week. How much do you know about Europe’s elite? Answers at the bottom of the page.

1. Bayer Leverkusen face Milan on Tuesday. Following Leverkusen’s 4-0 victory over Feyenoord last time out, they could win their opening two games of a Champions League campaign for the first time since the only season in which they reached the final, losing to Real Madrid at Hampden Park. Which season was that?

2. Should Manchester City avoid defeat away to Slovan Bratislava, they will equal the record for the longest unbeaten run in European Cup/Champions League history, currently held by which other English club?

3. Celtic have lost each of their last five away matches in the Champions League and failed to win any of their last eight such matches (D1 L7). The last time the Scottish giants won their first away match of a Champions League campaign was back in September 2017, when they beat which Belgian team 3-0 in what was their only win of the 2017-18 UCL campaign?

4. Dusan Vlahovic has been involved in four goals in eight Champions League appearances for Juventus (two goals, two assists), assisting in each of his last two games. Only three players have assisted in three games in a row in the competition for Juve; can you name any of them?

5. Endrick scored on his Champions League debut for Real Madrid as a late substitute against Stuttgart on Matchday 1. At the age of 18 years and 73 days when they go to Lille this week, the Brazilian could be the youngest player to score in his first two Champions League appearances. Which former Real Madrid striker currently holds that record?

Ask Opta

This week’s question comes from Graham Williams, who asks: “I’m starting to fear for my beloved Cardiff City this season. Can you tell me what the lowest points total in the Championship era is, please?”

Do you have a stats-based football question you want to Ask Opta? If so, send it to editors@theanalyst.com and we’ll do our best to provide you with the answer in a future edition of SVQ.

Answer:

It’s still very early days, Graham, so there’s no need to catastrophise just yet. We’ll still answer this one for you though, out of curiosity if nothing else.

The team with the lowest points total in a full Championship season (since 2004-05) is Rotherham United, who only amassed 23 points in the 2016-17 campaign. Unsurprisingly, that season also saw the Millers record the most losses in a Championship season, with 33. No other team has ever lost more than 29.

Blackpool only managed 26 points in 2014-15, having won the fewest games in a Championship campaign (four), but their 14 draws that season saw them get a few more points on the board, even if it obviously still meant comfortable relegation to League One.

Rotherham account for three of the four worst performances in Championship history, also only securing 27 and 29 points in the 2023-24 and 2004-05 seasons respectively.

Things aren’t looking great for Cardiff right now, with just one point from their first seven games. That means they’re on course to get fewer than 10 points, though clearly that can change very quickly with even a couple of wins.

The Bluebirds will have to shore up at the back and find goals at the other end too. Their 17 goals conceded is an average of 2.4 per game. The most goals conceded in a Championship season came from that aforementioned Rotherham side in 2016-17, who allowed 98 goals past them, an average of 2.1 per game.

Cardiff’s goal in the 4-1 loss at Hull City on Saturday was just their second league strike so far, with the fewest goals scored in a Championship season being 33 by Barnsley in the 2021-22 campaign.

The words ‘must do better’ come to mind, but as said, there is a very long way to go.

The Opta supercomputer did predict Cardiff would finish bottom at the start of the season, though.