The Premier League team who struggles the most without their star player, revealed

The Premier League team who struggles the most without their star player, revealed

To be successful in the Premier League, every player needs to show their individual talent, combined with the capability to work together as a team, to become an overall more cohesive unit. But are some teams being carried by the individual ability of their best player?

Interested in this, Livefootballtickets.com wanted to find out which Premier League team struggles the most without their star player. To do this, they reproduced the current Premier League table by removing the goal contributions of each team’s highest goal scorer so far this season. The results allowed the experts to reveal which team would have its performance most affected without the goals and assists of its star player.

Key points

• Manchester United is the most affected team in the league – they would be 8 points and 4 positions worse offwithout the goal contributions of Cristiano Ronaldo.
  
  
• The second most affected is Liverpool who are also 8 points worse off without Mo Salah’s goals and assists.
  
  
• Remarkably, if all the star players were removed from every team, almost 50% of the teams would benefit, showing just how dominant these players are.

Most affected PL team without their star player

Livefootballtickets.com can reveal that the Premier League team that would struggle the most without their star player is Manchester United. With Cristiano Ronaldo’s goal contributions for the team removed, the Red Devils are 8 points and 4 positions worse off – dropping from fourth position to eighth.

Liverpool would be the second most affected team without their star man, Mohamed Salah, with the Reds also dropping 8 points without their talisman. The Egyptian forward has been in sensational form this season and has more goal contributions than any other player in the league (16 goals, 9 assists). Without Salah’s contribution, Liverpool have scored 43% fewer goals, but remarkably are only one position lower in third.

The third most affected team is Leeds United who are 7 points and 4 positions worse off without the goal contributions of their star man Raphinha. Leeds have struggled to repeat their electric performances from last season and will hope to turn it around in the last few months of the 2021/22 campaign. Without the Brazilian’s goal contributions, Leeds drops four positions to 19th place and have scored 41% fewer goals.

Dropping the fourth highest number of points is Wolverhampton Wanderers who, without the goal contributions of Raúl Jiménez, are 5 points and 2 positions worse off, placing them tenth. Tottenham Hotspur dropped the fifth most amount of points with 4 fewer points, but remarkably only moved down one position to sixth without Son Heung-Min’s contributions.

Premier League table with every team’s star player removed

Methodology

1. Livefootballtickets.com sought to determine the Premier League team who would struggle the most without the goal contributions of their star player.
   
   
2. To identify each Premier League teams “Star Player” the analysts at Livefootballtickets.com investigated the official Premier League website, which helped them discover the highest scoring individual on each team. As a result, the top goal scorer on each team was denoted as the star player.
   
   
3. In total, 24 Premier League games were analysed from so far this season. All of the match and player data were sourced from the official Premier League website—this included the full-time result and the goals scored and assisted from each match. League games that took place after 6/2/22 were not recorded
   
   
4. For each match that took place, if a goal was scored or assisted by the star player, that goal was withdrawn, and the relevant team's score was reduced.
   
   
5. This then allowed the team to produce a Premier League table based on the new points and goal data for each team based on wins, draws and losses (3/1/0).
   
   
6. The data was collected on 06/02/2022 and is accurate as of then but subject to change.

Credit: livefootballtickets.com