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Who are the best and worst clubs in the A-League?
Several weeks ago, Mike Tuckerman claimed that the A-League had come of age.
While I don’t agree entirely with that sentiment, I certainly feel that season eight will mark a turning point in the evolving history of the competition.
With that in mind, I thought it might be time to look at which clubs have been the most successful, and which have not, through the history of the A-League to date.
With only one or two seasons each, I’ve thought it best to exclude Wanderers, North Queensland Fury and New Zealand Knights from these figures.
I have also excluded finals figures, so this is only based on the home and away rounds.
So which team has the most wins in the history of the A-League? Central Coast Mariners come out best with 85, closely followed by 83 each for the Victory and the Roar.
These three also top the win percentage ratio at about 42-43 percent.
With only 25 wins from 84 games at 30 percent, the Heart props up the bottom of the table, and Newcastle, with 61 wins at 31%, isn’t a whole lot better.
Do you expect to see your team win at home? Well then you should also expect to be disappointed.
CCM with 48 wins from 96 games at exactly 50 percent are the only team to have won at least half their games on their own turf, though the Victory come close with 49 from 99.
The most regularly disappointed fans are in Newcastle having lost 34 games from 96 at just over 35 percent. If you are a Jets fan, expect to lose every third time you go to the ground.
Roar are the best travellers of the comp with 39 wins at 40 percent on the road, followed by the Mariners with 37.
In fact, with a 39-30-28 and 37-30-32 record respectively, they are also the only two teams to win more on the road than they lose.
Apparently Kiwis really can’t fly as Phoenix have lost a massive 60 percent of their games on the road, with Perth only marginally better at 59 percent.
Do you like to see goals? Then watch Melbourne Victory. Their 310 goals at 1.59 per game has them 18 goals ahead of Central Coast Mariners, while Heart have managed only 1.15 per game in their three year history.
161 of Melbourne Victory’s goals have come at home for 1.63 per game, while Melbourne Heart are better at home, boosting their average to 1.29, but are still the worst of any team. Melbourne Victory also top the away goals table with 136, marginally ahead of Roar on 133.
Defensively, the Mariners and the Roar are head and shoulders above everyone else conceding a miserly 216 and 220 respectively at 1.11 and 1.13.
The Perth keeper needs to check the size of his goal posts regularly having given away 291 goals at 1.49.
At home, Gold Coast United were toughest to breach, conceding only 0.82 per match, while away, the Mariners and the Roar proved their consistency with only 1.12 and 1.21 each.
Positions on goal difference then go to Central Coast Mariners on +73 and Brisbane Roar on +66. The team least likely to reach the finals on GD is the Jets with -48.
Finally, and in what many might consider a huge upset, the dirtiest team in the competition with 186 bookings at 2.21 per match is Heart, putting them a long way ahead of Phoenix at only 1.92.
For those who thought it might have been the Victory, they hold the overall record at 331 but only 1.7 per game.
Fear not Kevin Muscat fans, Victory do have the most reds with 22 at a table topping .11 per match.
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