The return of the SPAOTP All-Time Premier League Tables

Two years ago almost to the day, Some People Are On The Pitch produced a blog article which would prove to be one of its most popular ever. We're not entirely sure why, but we were glad it was seen by so many people as it took a long time to compile.

The article in question was called All-Time Premier League Tables and its content, like its premise, was fairly self-explanatory. Our aim was to add up the total number of points attained by every club ever to play in the Premier League and see who had done better than who.

But we went a bit further than that. We also tried to calculate which teams had scored and conceded the most goals and who had won the most points per match on average. The results proved quite interesting and were digested by many of you time and time again over the following couple of years.

Which brings us to the present day. We felt the time was now right to update the All-Time Premier League Tables we produced back in 2008 so you could see how things currently stood. Here below are the results of our hard work, the details of which are correct up to and including April 30 2010.

Our main table (see left - click to enlarge) shows the total number of points scored by anyone who's ever played in the English top flight. As we said two years ago, it goes without saying that the more seasons you play, the more points you're likely to pick up so don't think we're altogether surprised by many of these details.

That said, we can confirm that Man United continue to rule the roost with an increased lead over Arsenal of 180 points (it was 155) while Arsenal's lead over Chelsea is down from 66 points to 47 since 2008.

A little further down, Newcastle and Blackburn have slipped slightly (the former having the excuse of being relegated at the end of last season) while West Ham creep into the top 10 at the expense of Leeds United.

At the other end of the table, Burnley may not finish bottom of the Premier League in their first season, but they may be bottom of our table unless they can pick up three points from their remaining two games.

Our second table (see right) shows the average number of points won per game and here many of the teams will be in the same positions as in the previous table, albeit with a few exceptions.

Aston Villa are fifth in our 'total points' table, but in terms of 'points per match', they're less successful than Leeds and Newcastle. Just outside the top 10 are many teams who have long since been absent from the top flight but still retain their proud record from days gone by, namely QPR (11th), Sheffield Wednesday (12th) and Wimbledon (14th).

There's little change at the other end except for West Brom escaping the bottom three, but only by a single place.

Next up we can see who's scored the most goals in the Premier League (see left) and incredibly Manchester United have maintained their tremendous achievement of bagging nearly two goals every game. Once again, Newcastle's absence from the top flight allows Tottenham and Aston Villa to inch a little further up the table, the latter having only just overtaken Newcastle last Sunday.

At the foot of the 'goals scored table', Burnley are tied on 37 points with Barnsley but can leave The Tykes behind if they can find the net against either Birmingham (playing as this post's being written) or Tottenham next Sunday.

Finally, we take a look at the table showing who's conceded the most goals (see right) and still surprising everyone as they did two years ago are Tottenham. Spurs fans will be pleased to know that their propensity for leaking goals is getting better, but Everton fans be warned - your team's inching towards that top spot...

Also shipping goals more often since 2008 are West Ham who rise from 6th to 4th while Man City have also now entered the top 10 that no-one wants to be in.

Burnley and Stoke, two newcomers to the Premier League since we compiled our previous article, find themselves in the bottom three and providing they don't concede hat-fulls between now and next weekend, they should stay there.

We're sorry to say that the final word has to go to Swindon who, in terms of average goals conceded per game, remain the worst team in Premier League history with 2.381. Who knows, though - if Danny Wilson can guide his team through the League One play-offs, they might soon be back to set that record straight.

(As last time, we apologise in advance for any incorrect details shown in our tables. If we've missed any glaringly obvious mistakes, please get in touch and we'll correct them immediately. Thank you.)