Stat’s a Fact – 2015/16 Season



The 2015/16 Barclays Premier League season saw West Ham United set a number of club records.

The most notable was the 62 points collected by the Hammers, which eclipsed the previous high of 57 set by Harry Redknapp’s squad in 1998/99.

Slaven Bilic’s side also beat Redknapp’s 1997/98 selection by scoring 65 goals, nine more than a Hammers squad that included John Hartson, Frank Lampard and Trevor Sinclair.

The 65 goals scored in 38 league matches this season were shared between 16 players, with Dimitri Payet and Andy Carroll leading the way with nine each.

In total, seven different players scored five league goals or more – Payet, Carroll, Michail Antonio, Cheikhou Kouyate, Manuel Lanzini, Mark Noble and Diafra Sakho.

Forty-one of those 65 goals were scored from open play, with 17 from set pieces and four successful penalties – three from Noble and one from Carroll. The Hammers benefitted from just one own-goal, scored by Swansea City’s Stephen Kingsley on 7 May.

West Ham smashed their record for the least number of Premier League games lost in a single season, losing just eight to beat the previous low of 13 set in both 1998/99 and 1999/00.

Unsurprisingly, Bilic’s men also set a new record low for away defeats in a Premier League season with five – two lower than the seven losses suffered on the road in 2008/09.

Just three of those eight defeats came at home, but that was not quite good enough to match the two home defeats suffered by the Hammers in 1997/98, when they finished eighth.
A seventh-place finish represented West Ham’s best since 2001/02, when Redknapp’s side collected 53 points and finished with a -9 goal difference.

It was a different story this season, with Slaven Bilic’s team achieving a +14 goal difference – the first time since 1985/86 that West Ham have finished a top-flight campaign with a positive goals-for/against record.

As a team, West Ham completed 78% of their passes and enjoyed 49% of possession on average, creating 14.7 shots and 4.9 shots on target per game.

Individually, Payet also topped West Ham’s charts for assists (12), shots (69), dribbles (118) and key passes (119) in 2015/16. Aaron Cresswell and Noble each contributed four assists.

Captain Noble was the Hammers’ midfield general, making more tackles (103), interceptions (83) and passes (1,924) than any other player.

While Noble was the most prolific passer, Lanzini was the most accurate, completing 88.9% of his passes in 26 Premier League appearances, with Noble (86.4%) in second place.

In the air, it was unsurprisingly Carroll who won the most aerial duels with 112 out of 200 attempted, ahead of Kouyate (87) and Ogbonna (62).

Defensively, Angelo Ogbonna led the way with 161 clearances, while full-back Cresswell made 63 blocks.

Cresswell joined Noble in making a team-high 37 starts and appearances, but it was the No3 who was on the pitch for longer overall – 3,315 minutes to Noble’s 3,205.