Manchester United Stats: All The Data Sources You’ll Ever Need
Looking for some cold, hard data? We’ve put together the ultimate Manchester United stats resource to help you find exactly what you need.
WhoScored.com is a hugely comprehensive source for Man Utd stats. As well as the usual games, goals, assists and cards, this resource includes everything from height and weight information for our players to minutes played, shots per game (SpG) pass completion (PS%), aerial duals won per game, man of the match awards and WhoScored’s own player rating scores. You can segment the summary data based on home or away games and defensive or offensive players.
The dedicated passing stats section is probably the highlight, with data on key passes per game(KeyP), average passes per game (AvgP), crosses per game, long balls per game (LongB) and through balls per game (ThrB).
But that’s not all! Click into the ‘Detailed’ tab and there’s also some beautifully granular data on a range of specific in-game actions – you can look at how often players were dribbled past, whether they lost the ball more due to their own errors or being dispossessed, and analyse what kind of positions they shot from, for example. The ‘Detailed’ area also has some powerful filtering options – you can look at stats on the first 30 minutes of games, for instance, or just view data for players who made more than 10 appearances. You can also filter by age, position and nationality.
As if that wasn’t enough…there’s also data on the different formations we’ve used (times used, results, goals for and against, ratings etc.) and a summary of the team’s strengths (e.g. “creating chances using through balls”), weaknesses (e.g. “stopping opponents from creating chances”) and style (e.g. “possession football”).
SUMMARY: For in-depth player analysis, this is your go-to source. Visit website.
You can’t talk about football stats without mentioning Squawka – perhaps the most innovative source of publicly available data on Manchester United. They combine a wealth of team- and player-level statistics, accompanied by unique, shareable visuals that really set Squawka apart.
Want a graph showing which body parts were used most by United to shoot with last season? No problem. Want a pitch map showing which areas the most chances were created from? It’s just a couple of clicks away.
Where Squawka really comes into its own, though, is the ‘Comparison Matrix’, which allows you to compare United players against each other or their counterparts from other teams, or compare stats at team-level. You can add multiple stats and players / teams / seasons to the matrix, making this a really powerful tool. As well as comparing different players who occupy the same position, for example, you can also use the matrix to evaluate how a particular individual or team has evolved from season to season. The visuals aren’t quite as polished as some of the other areas of the site, but they still look pretty smart, and being able to slice and stack the data in this way is fantastic. Just be warned that this can get pretty addictive!
The data in Squawka only goes back to 2012/13, but the quality of what you’ll find here more than makes up for that. There’s also a Squawka app, which is well worth a look.
SUMMARY: An exceptionally powerful and versatile stats resource with strong, insightful visuals you won’t find elsewhere. Visit website.
Want to view Manchester United statistics right back to the inception of the Premier League back in 1992? It’s all here, with the normal league table data as well as things like goals per match, conceded per match, longest unbeaten streak and clean sheet percentage.
Some of the more granular data such as pitch maps showing shots on/off target by position, and a graph showing goals conceded by match time, are only available from 2006/07 onwards.
SUMMARY: To see how United have performed and evolved during the Premier League era, head to the EPL’s official site. Visit website.
This is more of a source for United’s honours and records throughout the club’s history, with information on titles won from 1907 onwards, team and player-based records, attendance records and so on.
If you want to find out all the times United broke the British transfer record from 1900 onwards, or see who scored the fastest four goals for us (SPOILER: it was Solskjaer, who netted 4 in 13 minutes against Notts Forest in 1999), then this is the place to come.
SUMMARY: The definitive source for information on Man Utd’s honours and records. Visit website.
Here you can view Man Utd stats by competition and by year, right back to 2001/02. If you want an easy way to see a snapshot of a specific season for the club, this is another great, very well-designed resource.
Attendances, games with most goals, and largest margins of victory/defeat are all here. Did you know, for instance, that no team beat United by more than 1 goal in the league in our 2007/08 title-winning season? (Coventry City actually recorded the biggest win over us that year – beating United 2-0 at Old Trafford in the Capital One Cup.) What’s especially nice is the ability to click through from the stats to full match reports for the games cited – this is really convenient when you’re in full research mode.
There are also top scorers, assists and discipline tables, which makes it easy to find out obscure things like the fact that John O’Shea was our 7th top scorer in all competitions on 2004/05, or that Scholesy racked up an almighty 24 yellow cards in 2001/02 (by comparison, nobody got more than 8 yellows in 2014/15, with Herrera topping that particular table).
SUMMARY: Clean, simple user interface and great historic data – another one to bookmark. Visit website.
Transfermarkt is the go-to place for information on the market value of any Man Utd player, and you can also find out which agents represent them, but there’s a lot more here once you start exploring. There are some interesting team-level stats, such as average age, percentage of foreign players, and current number of internationals. You can also view performance data for individual players, as well as injury histories, suspension records and more.
But one of the best features is being able to look at specific players’ records against other clubs. For example, you can easily establish that David De Gea has kept more cleansheets (5) against QPR than any other club, or that Juan Mata loves scoring against Arsenal and Norwich, having bagged 4 goals against both sides.
The player-level data is really detailed – as well as all the usual stuff, you can see the number of times a player was subbed on/off in a specific season/competition, as well as goals scored from the penalty spot, minutes per goal and more.
One of the standout features, though, is the performance data by manager, which gives you a great, career-level overview. You can see that LVG has won 61% of his games as a manager, for example, or that his best points-per-game figure came during his 281 games as Ajax manager. You can also see some basic data on managers’ playing careers, plus information on periods served as assistant coach.
SUMMARY: A really wide-ranging resource that combines market data with historic information and performance insights – a great addition to any fan or researcher’s toolkit. Visit website.
Hopefully you’ve found this guide useful. There are some brilliant, freely-available sources out there for Manchester United stats, and we’ve tried to list the best ones here. As and when new resources become available, we’ll update this page and add them to the list.
