Ever Present Players

I have always been interested by the phenomenon that is a player who can go a whole season without missing a minute of football. Obviously injury, rotation and form or the presence of a decent replacement are all reasons for a player to miss minutes. How many players have done this in Premier League seasons of the past? The 95-96 season was the first to be reduced to 38 games a season (previously 42). Surely fewer fixtures would make it easier to not miss a minute? Also, does the increasing physicality of the league make it harder to go all season without missing a minute?

As you can see the trend goes very much up and down, however were you to add a trend line (and I did) the gradient is -0.0312, to the non-mathematically inclined that means that that there is, on average, a very very slight decline in the frequency with which a player achieves this feat. If this season 7 players had not missed a minute (which has been equalled or bettered 10 times) then the gradient of the trend line would be 0.0078. Basically, the number of occasions that a player has gone all season and played every minute is neither really more or less frequent than it was at the beginning of the Premier League era.

Most frequent not missing a minute-ers

Name	PL seasons without missing a minute
David James	8
Brad Friedel	5
Jussi Jaaskelainen	5
Shay Given	4
Tim Howard	4
Pepe Reina	4
Nigel Martyn	3
Paul Robinson	3

That list is exclusively populated by goalkeepers, with David James well ahead of Friedel and Jaaskelainen. The most seasons managed by an outfield player is 2, achieved by just 4 players (Gareth Southgate, Alan Wright, Wayne Bridge and Sylvain Distin). All of the outfield players to have achieved this are defenders. Alan Wright is the shortest player in Premier League history and once strained his knee reaching for the accelerator in his new Ferrari.

By Alex Pointon

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Statistics from www.transfermarkt.co.uk