Records that define the Premiership, England's top division

The Premiership is widely seen as the most competitive football league in the world. It is a place where nothing is certain and where the weakest teams can beat the strongest, an exciting division packed with some of the best players on the planet.

The Premier League is full of records. To start with, the club with the most titles is Manchester United. The Red Devils also hold the records for the most consecutive titles and the biggest winning margin.

Chelsea hold another interesting record. The Blues have the most wins in a single season (29 of 38), and they achieved it twice, in 2004/05 and 2005/06. They also share the record for the most home wins in a season (18 of 19) with Manchester United and Manchester City. Chelsea scored 103 goals in 2009/10, the best scoring record in Premier League history, and they also hold the record for the best defence, having kept 25 clean sheets in the 2004/05 season.

Arsenal are the only team to go through a campaign unbeaten (2003/04). The Gunners also hold the record for the longest winning run (14 games), between 10 February 2002 and 24 August, and they went 49 games unbeaten, the longest such run in the Premier League.

Alongside the positive records, there are plenty of embarrassing ones. Derby County, for example, won only one of their 19 home matches in 2007/08, and that was their only win of the entire season. It takes a remarkably poor campaign to win just once in 38 matches.

Sunderland, one of the teams in the Premier League at the time, hold another unwanted record. The Black Cats suffered 20 consecutive defeats not once but twice. In 2005/06 Sunderland lost 29 matches in total, a figure Derby County matched in 2007/08.

The league’s greatest forward remained Alan Shearer, who scored 260 goals in 441 matches, an average of 0.59 goals per game. The only active Premiership player anywhere near him on the list was Wayne Rooney. The Manchester United forward had scored 187 and looked unlikely to reach Shearer’s record. The Ex Blackburn and Newcastle striker hold another record – the most goals in a single season (34), shared with Andrew Cole.

Petr Cech was the leading goalkeeper in Premier League records. The Arsenal player had kept 172 clean sheets and was still adding to that tally.

The biggest win in Premier League history is Manchester United’s 9-0 victory over Ipswich Town on 4 March 1995. The Red Devils also hold the record for the biggest away win (8-1 against Nottingham Forest in 1999).

The Premier League was more exciting than ever. That season looked like one of the most competitive in years, with nobody able to predict how it would end, so more records seemed likely to fall.

Records that fell in the following seasons

The prediction that more records would fall proved accurate within two years. Chelsea's mark of 29 wins in a season was the first to go: Antonio Conte's side won 30 of their 38 league games on the way to the 2016/17 title and finished with 93 points.

A year later Manchester City rewrote much of the list in Pep Guardiola's second season in charge. City became the first team to reach 100 points in a Premier League season, sealed by Gabriel Jesus's stoppage-time winner at Southampton on the final day. They won 32 of their 38 matches, scored 106 goals to overtake Chelsea's 103 from 2009/10, and finished with a goal difference of +79. Between 26 August and 27 December 2017 they won 18 league games in a row, comfortably beyond Arsenal's run of 14. City also set new marks for away wins (16) and away points (50), and their 19-point lead over second-placed Manchester United was the largest title-winning margin in the competition's history, taking that record from Manchester United. The same season Phil Foden, at 17 years and 350 days, became the youngest player to collect a Premier League winner's medal.