Premier League Statistics: Scholes, Arsenal, Manchester City and More

The Premier League is once again under way and now that the first round of matches have been played, the first round of statistics are also out.

Lets have a look at some of the statistics generated by a set of matches that suggest the latest installement of the Premier League will be as exciting as ever.

Top Passer

Paul Scholes churned out 104 passes during United's clash with Newcastle, with an accuracy rate of 87%.

This gives Scholes the most passes for the week, as well as the forth highest accuracy rate.

Scholes is defying the odds and proving that even at 35, he still has the ability to perform at the highest level and play a full and influential 90 minutes.

Here are the other top passers:                

Yaya Toure 90 passes at 93% accuracy

Essien         86 passes at 90% accuracy

Mikel           85 passes at 89% accuracy

Terry          80 passes at 92% accuracy

Team Passing

Manchester City completed an impressive 531 passes to top the table for most successful passes. Despite this, they couldn't find a single goal as they played out a 0-0 draw with a Tottenham side that managed just 285 passes.

Here are the other top passing sides: 

Chelsea:       525

Man United:  522

Arsenal:        460

Everton:        383

Arsenal's 460 passes yielded just one goal, whereas Chelsea's 525 saw them pick up six goals, a statistic which should worry Arsenal considering that they have a reputation for silky but ineffective football.

Blackburn managed just 105 passes, the fewest of any team as they pulled off a 1-0 win over Everton.

Top Stopper

Joe Hart, England's latest shot stopper, had an impressive first week as Man City's first choice keeper.

He topped the saves chart, making eight stops in total, with a 100% saves to shot ratio. This impressive outing was enough to earn Manchester City a point against Tottenham and adds to the view that Hart is the future of England goalkeeping.

Here are the runners up:

Gilks              5 saves at 100%

Stockdale      5 saves at 100%

Carson          5 saves at 45%

Jaaskelainen 4 saves at 100%

Scott Carson didn't have a great outing, he was at fault for at least one of the six goals he conceded against a strong Chelsea side, but still pulled off five saves.

An impressive clean sheet for Fulham's Stockdale must have been a nice early boost to a player who probably hadn't expected to be playing at the end of last season.

Rob Green didn't have a great outing as he made his return to action after the World Cup, conceding three goals and failing to impress.

Foulers

Bobby Zamora committed five fouls in Fulham's 0-0 draw, picking up a yellow card in the process.

Cattermole and Koscielny meanwhile committed two fouls each, earning themselves red cards. 

The top fouler though, was John Carew of Aston Villa, he made six fouls, all of them for bad tackles, but avoided picking up so much as a yellow card.

Tackling

Alcaraz and Evra finished the first week of the Premier League joint top of the tackling table, having both made eight tackles with an 88% success rate.

The other top tacklers were:

Gerrard         8 tackles at 75%

Assou-Ekotto 7 tackles at 86%

Bale               7 tackles at 86%

Harry Redknapp will be pleased to see two of his players among the top tacklers in the league as a tight defence is essential to a team looking to solidify their position in the top four.

Steven Gerrard meanwhile is continuing his good form from the recent England friednly, a real positive for Roy Hodgson.

Team Shots

Tied for first in terms of team shots are Aston Villa and Chelsea with 17 shots a piece.

The difference between the two is the shots on target. Chelsea managed 12 on target, Villa just five. This allowed Chelsea to score double the goals from the same amount of shots.

Tottenham:  14 shots

Birmingham: 12 shots

Everton:       12 shots

Wolves:        11 shots

West Ham:    11 shots

Fulham:        11 shots

Arsenal:        11 shots

Tottenham's 14 shots yielded no goals, a fact Redknapp is bound to be concerned about, although if it hadn't been for Joe Hart the result would've been rather different.

Goals

Ryan Giggs scored in United's victory over Newcastle, meaning that he has now scored in all 21 seasons of top level football he has played in at United.

He is the only player to have scored in every Premier League season, an impressive feat to say the least. At 37-years-old, Giggs may not be around for many more seasons, but at the moment he is still more than capable of helping United to yet another title.

Giggs wasn't the biggest hotshot of the weekend though. Didier Drogba knocked in a hat-trick, becoming the fourth player to score back to back Premier League hat-tricks(the other three are Henry, L Ferdinand and Wright).

Interestingly, 68% of Drogba's  85 Premier League goals have come at Stamford Bridge.

Harewood and Malouda both scored two goals in an opening weekend which saw 26 goals scored.

Arsenal

Arsenal started with the first game of the new season with just one English player, Jack Wilshere. No other team fielded as few English players.

Arsenal have fielded teams without a single English player before, so this isn't unheard of. It could become less common though as teams will have to have at least eight home-grown player in their 25 man squads, a new rule being implemented by the FA.

Another interesting Arsenal statistic is that they haven't won an away game since January when the opposition weren't down to 10 men. 

Crossing

Gareth Bale has overcome the problem he'd had with not being able to start a Premier League match and win and is now instead putting in some impressive performances for Spurs.

His crossing has always been good and he pulled out all the stops last weekend, sending in 23 crosses.

He has also been involved in six of Tottenham's last nine goals, proving his value to a team trying to break into the Champions League.