The Greatest Individual Premier League Season

The Premier League has been around for almost three decades, and just like any millennial, it's uh, it's been through some rough times. But it's also been through some blistering highs. Every season, apart from the eventual winning team, there is always one if not multiple standout performers that we all get excited about. And likewise, every single season, there seems to be a bit of a disconnect when collectively deciding who the player of the season was. You're telling me Harry Kane scored 23 goals, made 14 assists, and Ruben Diaz was the player of the season last year. I get that it's hard to use stats to measure a defender's performance, but I really don't know, man. In any case, that got me thinking. Of all the standout performers that we've seen in the Prem in its life cycle, who was THE standout performer? Today, we'll be attempting to answer that question. So, who had the greatest ever individual Premier League season? Yo, what's up everyone, hope you're all doing well. In today's video, we'll be taking a dive into the Premier League's rich history of elite performers to see how they match up to one another. If you'd be so kind, go ahead and do it. Go on, you know what I mean. Alright, now that that's out the way, let's go over some ground rules. The intention of this video is to be as objective as possible, taking only stats and recorded major achievements into consideration. I'll briefly go over why this may not be the best strategy for this kind of assessment, but why we're going to do it like this anyway. Now, of course, as I mentioned in the intro, stats often fail to tell the full picture when it comes to who the best player in any stretch of time was. The reasoning for this being that not all positions are equally represented by statistics. For example, a goalkeeper is often rated based on their total saves, save percentages and clean sheets. But if the defence is incredible and they don't get called into action often, saves are not a great metric. And if the defence is in absolute shambles and leaves the keeper out to dry, then who's really at fault? Likewise, a defender could have a great game, multiple interceptions, ball recoveries, tackles, etc. But if the goalkeeper makes errors or the midfielders fail to screen the opposition, their statistical performance very well might not scream world class. And finally, when it comes to midfielders, there really are no metrics we can use to measure a player's tactical awareness, positioning and the timing of their runs in both defence and attack. For example, a midfielder's ability to press and block off an opposition's passing lane is a crucial trait. It's also a trait that you will never find a meaningful stat for. Yes, interceptions can be measured, but a player's physical and tactical presence cannot. So that leaves us with attackers. Of course, attackers suffer from the same statistical misrepresentations as other players. You can't put an attacker's ability to beat an offside's trap into numbers, but what we can put into numbers are the factors that realistically hold the most weight in football. Goals and assists. Even individual awards, to an extent. And if we're being honest, attackers dominate these factors almost unanimously. So in order to filter out the list of players we're going to look at, as a starting point, in order to qualify for this assessment, a player has to have achieved a combined total of 30 goals and assists in one season. And right off the bat, even though the premier league, and football in general, only began in 1992, we're only starting this assessment from the 1995-96 season. The reasoning for this being that the first three seasons of the And seeing as every season since then has included 20 teams and 38 games, I felt the extra four games give some players a bit of an edge in this discussion. Therefore, before we get started, honourable mentions go to these nine players who fit the bill before the 1995-96 season. And no, you're not misreading that. Alan Shearer and Andy Cole did indeed have 47 combined goals and assists in 1995 and 1994, respectively. Adding on to that, Andy Cole was only 22 years old by the end of that season. That is… that's pretty wild. Alright, it took a bit of time, but here we are. This is the official pool of players we're looking at. According to the official Premier League website database, the minimum requirements for this assessment have been met 34 different times by 22 players. Of course, we have all the usual suspects making up the numbers of this list, most notably the likes of Thierry Henry in four separate seasons, four consecutive separate seasons by the way, and Alan Shearer and Harry Kane, both appearing three times each. Quite literally, the best of the best. Although they may not have had the best seasons of the bunch, a few more than remarkable entries to this list include Frank Lampard, twice, Bruno Fernandes and Kevin De Bruyne, the only midfielders in Premier League history to make the cut. Yaya Toure also came very close in 2014, but fell just short with 29 combined goal contributions that year. We also have Kevin Phillips, who was the top scorer for Sunderland all the way back in 2000. Now this entry is pretty wild for a few reasons. Apart from the fact that he played for Sunderland, he remains to this day the only Englishman to ever win the European Golden Shoe, which is of course for the most goals scored in the top division of any major European National League. And even further to that, Sunderland were playing in the first division only one season prior to this ridiculous achievement. Now that is pretty wild. So if we go even further and cut this list down to our top 12, here's what we're looking at. Premier League Royalty Now don't ask me why I chose 12. I already question my life choices on a daily basis as it is. The same concept applies here. You'll notice that a few players on this shortened list have the same number of combined goals and assists. To differentiate between ranked placements and create a top 12 of unique entries, goals scored were used as the tiebreaker. So basically, if two players achieved the same combined numbers, the one with more goals was given the higher placement. So as we can see, from a purely numbers perspective, the best amongst the best is none other than Thierry Henry in the 2002-03 season of the Premier League with 44 total goal contributions. To put this madness into perspective, the only other player to score at least 20 and assist at least 20 in a single major European league is Lionel Messi, 17 years after Henry did it. However, if we're being completely honest, this should not be surprising to anyone. This man was a true force of nature in his prime. I mean, just look at the flashbacks that Jamie Carragher gets when Henry simply makes physical contact with him. That is brutal. What's crazy about this season is that while Arsenal did win the FA Cup and Henry won his fair share of personal achievements, it wasn't even his best overall season. That of course came in Arsenal's invincible season, number 10 on this list. In addition to the league itself, he also walked away with every significant individual award, namely the Premier League Player of the Season, the FWA Footballer of the Year and the PFA Players' Player of the Year. I mean, this dude was something else. Back to the top of the list and we have Mohamed Salah and Luis Suarez being the only players other than Henry to score and assist more than 40 goals in a single 38-game season. In the case of Suarez in particular, he missed the first five games of the season Adding on to that, he had the best goal contributions per game ratio of any player to fit the criteria for this video's assessment, by some distance too. Who knows what kind of numbers he could have put up if he just behaved only a tiny bit better. Like not even that much better, just enough to not bite someone. However, this is an assessment of what players achieved, not what they could have achieved. And before we wrap this one up, I'd be remiss if I didn't at the very least fully acknowledge the exploits of Cristiano Ronaldo's 2007-08 season. Although he may not have achieved the highest individual numbers, it would be extremely difficult to argue that he did not have the greatest ever overall season for a player in the Premier League era. Not only did he put up insane numbers, but he also won the Premier League, the Champions League, every single significant award that we were just talking about, including the UEFA Footballer of the Year, and the Ballon d'Or. But of course, the premise of this video was to find the best individual Premier League season of all time, based purely on the league itself. Instead, what Ronaldo had this year was, in my opinion, the best individual season of a player playing in the Premier League. The difference is subtle, but there is a difference. Out of interest, the goalkeeper with the most clean sheets in a single season is Petr Cech with 24, and of course the defender with the most clean sheets is John Terry with 25, both in the 2004-05 season, both playing for Chelsea. And considering the fact that Chelsea only conceded a ridiculously low 15 goals that year, means that this is not all that surprising. As for midfielders, as we've already shown, Frank Lampard had the most goals and assists of any midfielder in a single season in the 2009-10 season, with his 2004-05 season following closely. This Chelsea side really had it all. But if you're curious, you can check out this video to see how they did it. So that about wraps this one up. Thierry Henry in 2003 is our winner from a purely individual perspective. We can argue on the weighting of individual awards and team awards, but that brings in bias, which we're trying to avoid here. As mentioned in the beginning, I fully acknowledge that this is probably not the most accurate way of deciphering who had the greatest overall season. It's not perfect, but goals and assists are realistically the most universally accepted methods of assessing players because of how easy it is to quantify a player's contributions using them. I guess there's a reason why the Ballon d'Or is usually awarded to attackers. In any case, there we have it. Who's your personal pick for the player that had the best individual Premier League season of all time? Leave it in the comments and be sure to include any and every bias you wish. Anyway, that's all from me today. Truly hope you all enjoyed this one. Really enjoyed putting it together. Cheers and I'll catch you in the next one.