Chelsea’s victory over Aston Villa last weekend was significant not just because it kept Thomas Tuchel’s side joint-top of the Premier League and preserved their unbeaten start to the season.
The result also represented a 600th Premier League win for the Blues, a milestone which only one other club has reached in the history of the competition.
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We’ve gone through the numbers and taken a closer look at the top 10 clubs for Premier League wins, to give an idea of the size of the achievement.
10. West Ham United - 321 wins
For a team which has never finished higher than fifth in the Premier League, West Ham’s tally is more a symbol of longevity than of any consistently high points tallies. The 19 wins recorded by the Hammers in 2020-21 represents their best return from a single season, and with a 56-win lead on nearest challengers Southampton, it’s going to take a while before their top-10 spot is under any serious threat.
Indeed, two clubs with Premier League titles to their name - Blackburn Rovers and Leicester City - both find themselves a long way behind David Moyes’ team.
9. Aston Villa - 342
Despite recently spending three successive years outside the Premier League, and despite a decade having passed since they last finished a season in the top half of the top tier, Villa’s work in the earlier years of the competition ensures their spot in this particular top 10.
Villa’s best Premier League season was their very first one, where 21 victories (albeit in a 42-game season) ensured they finished the campaign closer than anyone else to champions Manchester United. Eight further top-six finishes would follow, though never with more than 64 points.
8. Newcastle United - 369
Another team to have spent some time outside the top flight, Newcastle’s three seasons in the second tier have been more spread out.
Just one of the last 15 seasons has brought a top-six finish for the Magpies, but a long run as regular qualifiers for European competition - from 1996-97 through to 2006-07 they had just one campaign without a continental fixture - has kept them well ahead of their closest chasers in the rankings. Bouncing straight back after two relegations has also helped, ensuring the gap can’t be closed too quickly.
7. Everton - 410
The lowest-ranked of the Premier League ever-presents, Everton’s win tally reflects a side which has gone 17 straight years without finishing below 12th or above 5th.
The 21 victories and 72 points picked up under Roberto Martínez in 2013-14 would have been enough to secure Champions League football in any of the last three top-flight seasons, and remains the club’s highest points tally since the inaguration of the Premier League in 1992, but their consistency means they’ve only twice failed to win 10 games in a single season.
6. Manchester City - 447
It says a lot about Manchester City’s recent dominance that they have managed to open up such a lead on Everton despite spending five fewer seasons in the top division.
Winning 32 of their 38 games in back-to-back seasons was perhaps the pinnacle of City’s domestic form under Pep Guardiola, while the last 10 campaigns have seen the 2020-21 champions average more than 26 wins per season. The low point (in a Premier League context at least) came in 2000-01, when a newly-promoted City went straight back down with just eight league wins, but that now feels like a very long time ago.
5. Tottenham Hotspur - 483
The last five seasons have seen Spurs pick up 34 fewer wins than City, suggesting a similar pattern in the coming years could see Guardiola’s side climb into the top five some time around 2026, but the different trajectories of the respective clubs might bring about such a scenario even sooner.
Many Premier League clubs haven’t reached 20 wins in a single season even once, let alone the seven achieved by Spurs under a range of managers, while their 26 victories in 2016-17 would have been enough to secure the title in other years.
4. Liverpool - 584
While Chelsea were the first team this season to cross the 600-win threshold, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see all of the top four hit that milestone before May.
Liverpool have three wins so far this season, and have picked up at least 20 victories in each of Jürgen Klopp’s full seasons in charge, so a failure to get the 16 more they need to take their all-time record to 600 would be a surprise. The pinnacle, of course, came in 2019-20 when the Reds won 32 of their 38 games after claiming 30 victories the season prior.
3. Arsenal - 598
Arsenal and Chelsea found themselves dead level on 597 Premier League wins before the start of this season, but the end to the previous campaign suggests it was never really a fair fight in the race to 600.
Just one of Arsenal’s last four seasons has seen the Gunners win more than half of their 38 league games, but even their best seasons weren’t quite as devastating as Manchester City’s or Liverpool’s best - 26 wins in two of their title campaigns was the pinnacle, while the 1997-98 champions picked up just three more points than the fifth-placed Gunners of 2016-17.
2. Chelsea - 600
While Chelsea had a few big seasons in the 90s, twice earning 20 victories in a single season, the 2003 takeover allowed them to shoot for bigger and better things. Still, after 29 wins in both of Jose Mourinho’s first season as manager, it took the Blues more than a decade to hit that magic 30 under Antonio Conte in 2016-17.
It took them until the 2007-08 season to hit the 300-win milestone, ending that particular campaign with a run to the Champions League final, so there’s a nice bit of symmetry in the club picking up win number 600 as the European champions.
1. Manchester United - 690
It was never going to be anyone else.
The team with the first Premier League title and the most title wins was always going to lead the way in match victories as well. Since 1992-93, there have only been two seasons in which the Red Devils have failed to win at least half of their games - 2016-17 under Jose Mourinho and 2019-20 under Ole Gunnar Solskjær - while Sir Alex Ferguson’s last two seasons were also his best wins-wise with 28 in each.
United’s 600th win in the competition came back in 2017, when Marouane Fellaini, Jesse Lingard and Antonio Valencia netted in a 3-1 victory over Middlesbrough, and they’re on track to bring up 700 at some point around Christmas this year.
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