Chelsea team of 2005-06 is best team ever in English football: Stats

Statistics have revealed that the Chelsea team of the 2005-06 season is the best ever team in English football, answering the long running debate in pubs throughout the world about which is the best football team of all time.

Statistician Ian McHale at the University of Salford, UK said that the whole point of sport is to work out who the best is and the most natural question likely to be asked is who has been the best football team of all time.

The statistician created a statistical model of team strengths along with his colleague Rose Baker and used it to analyze goal data from 2,00,000 matches in England and Wales that occurred between 1888, when the Football League was founded and 2012, the New Scientist reported.

Each team in the model scores goals at a rate that is determined by its attack ability divided by the opposite team's defensive skills, with an extra boost for the home team to model home advantage.

McHale and Baker reportedly worked out the most likely outcome of any English football match played over the duration spanning 124 years and used the results to calculate the all-time greatest team and came to the conclusion that the team is Chelsea.

Chelsea team of the 2005-06 topped the stats, followed by Manchester United team of 2007-08 and Arsenal's 2003-04 squad of 'invincibles', which was unbeaten in the league, the report added.