If only goals by English players counted, Liverpool would still be top of EPL

John's final project for the Data Journalism class.

How would the Premier League table look if only goals from English players are counted? With an incredible volume of foreign players now in the Premier League it’s a question that gets asked alarmingly frequently. I’ve looked into every single Premier League match this season to find out exactly who would come out on top.

Under the new rule, 274 matches ended differently; 618 goals were removed. Browse the two tables below to see the original and modified team performance.

Original Table
Alternative Table

#	Team	Games Played	Wins	Draws	Losses	Goals Scored	Points
1	Liverpool	35	25	5	5	96	80
2	Chelsea	35	23	6	6	67	75
3	Manchester City	34	23	5	6	91	74
4	Arsenal	35	21	7	7	62	70
5	Everton	35	20	9	6	57	69
6	Tottenham Hotspur	35	19	6	10	51	63
7	Manchester United	34	17	6	11	56	57
8	Southampton	35	13	10	12	50	49
9	Newcastle United	35	14	4	17	39	46
10	Stoke City	35	11	11	13	39	44
11	Crystal Palace	35	13	4	18	28	43
12	West Ham United	35	10	7	18	38	37
13	Swansea City	35	9	9	17	47	36
14	Hull City	34	10	6	18	34	36
15	Aston Villa	34	9	8	17	35	35
16	West Bromwich Albion	34	6	15	13	41	33
17	Norwich City	35	8	8	19	28	32
18	Fulham	35	9	3	23	35	30
19	Cardiff City	35	7	9	19	31	30
20	Sunderland	34	7	8	19	33	29

#	Team	Games Played	Wins	Draws	Losses	Goals Scored	Points
1	Liverpool	35	22	12	1	48	78
2	Southampton ↑ 6	35	18	12	5	36	66
3	Manchester United ↑ 4	34	16	11	7	32	59
4	Everton ↑ 1	35	13	18	4	18	57
5	West Ham United ↑ 7	35	11	17	7	27	50
6	Cardiff City ↑ 13	35	11	15	9	22	48
7	Crystal Palace ↑ 4	35	11	13	11	18	46
8	Sunderland ↑ 12	34	9	16	9	18	43
9	Hull City ↑ 5	34	8	19	7	15	43
10	Chelsea ↓ 8	35	7	22	6	10	43
11	Stoke City ↓ 1	35	8	16	11	15	40
12	Norwich City ↑ 5	35	6	22	7	14	40
13	Arsenal ↓ 9	35	6	22	7	10	40
14	Swansea City ↓ 1	35	8	13	14	15	37
15	Fulham ↑ 3	35	6	17	12	15	35
16	Tottenham Hotspur ↓ 10	35	4	22	9	7	34
17	Aston Villa ↓ 2	34	5	16	13	9	31
18	Manchester City ↓ 15	34	1	26	7	4	29
19	Newcastle United ↓ 10	35	1	23	11	1	26
20	West Bromwich Albion ↓ 4	34	3	14	17	6	23

Champions League Europa League Relegation

Shuffle the cards

All 20 clubs' (huge) rise and fall under this ~~unjustifiable~~ new rule.

Daniel Sturridge (LIV): 21 goals

Steven Gerrard (LIV): 13 goals

Raheem Sterling (LIV): 9 goals

Liverpool remain their dominance on the Premier League thanks to the 43 goals of in-form Daniel Sturridge, Steven Gerrard and Raheem Sterling. The Reds have a staggering 12 point lead on the chasing pack.

Jay Rodriguez (SOU): 17 goals

Rickie Lambert (SOU): 13 goals

Adam Lallana (SOU): 10 goals

Other teams who do well are Southampton, Cardiff City and Sunderland. The outstanding performance by the English attacking trio at Southampton (Jay Rodriguez, Rickie Lambert and Adam Lallana) secures them a second place on the table, defeating Premier League giant Manchester United who also have world-class English strikers like Wayne Rooney (17 goals).

Manchester City: 87 goals by foreign players | 4 goals by English players

Newcastle United: 38 goals by foreign players | 1 goal by English players

The biggest losers are unsurprisingly Manchester City and Newcastle. Among both teams only one English player (Joe Hart) made more than 15 apperances in the Premier League match starting squad. However, the fact that the Sky Blues drop 15 places to the delegation zone is still flabbergasting.

Ouch, lions

How differently are the 20 clubs dependent on English players to score?

It has been 14 years since an English player won the top scorer race in the Premier League. It has been 24 years since the England national football team made to the semi-final of the World Cup. Yet, due to the remarkable performance by international talents like Luis Suárez (31 goals), Yaya Touré (20 goals) and Sergio Agüero (17 goals), the English Premier League is still the world's most watched football league with an annual broadcast income of £1.2 billion.

It is quite obvious that clubs such as Cardiff City, Sunderland and Norwich City that are struggling at the bottom of the table either have a large number of English players on team or rely heavily on English players to score, while there is a very rare chance to see some of the enormously wealthy clubs like Manchester City have English players in club's starting 11 squad.

However, Liverpool's remarkable performance and Brendan Rodgers' trust on young English talents (Daniel Sturridge, Raheem Sterling and Jordan Henderson) this season are a perfect example that several top English players would still survive, or even thrive in a title race. Especially when Manchester City face a fine of €60m (£49m) from Uefa for their losses of £149 million the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons after buying Sergio Agüero, Samir Nasri, Gaël Clichy, Javi Garcia and Matija Nastasic, Liverpool's success with homegrown talents can be something replicable for others.