By arlington 
So, last night I decided to dig into Man Utd vs Palace stats after that boring 0-0 draw. Wanted to see if the numbers matched what my eyes saw. Grabbed my laptop around 11 PM, yawned, and thought “this shouldn’t take long.” Famous last words.
Where I Looked First
Checked four different footy stats sites cause I don’t trust any single source. Had tabs open everywhere – felt like some detective show montage. Funny thing? The Premier League’s own site had inconsistent head-to-head tables compared to others. Kept cross-referencing like a madman.
The Data Mining Pain
Manually pulled last 10 meetings dating back to 2020. Three hours vanished doing this:
- First problem: Cup matches vs league games all mixed together
- Second problem: Stats counted friendly in 2022? Who includes friendlies?!
- Third problem: Half these sites show shots differently – counted blocked shots as shots here but not there
Got so annoyed I made a spreadsheet at 2 AM. Colored coded rows like some kind of nerd.
What Jumped Out
Crystal Palace actually caused more headaches than I realized:
- United only scored more than once in just three of ten matches
- Palace defenders fouled United attackers twice as much at Old Trafford
- Four out of ten games had goals after 80th minute
Funny how the obvious thing – United winning more – wasn’t the interesting part.
The Final Messy Step
Tried to spot patterns between home/away games but got distracted by:
- Weather data from BBC not matching kickoff times
- Injury lists affecting lineups
- That weird 5-0 outlier from 2021 messing up averages
Eventually just said “screw it” and focused purely on Palace’s recent form against big teams.
Why This Stupid Research
Real talk? Got into it cause my brother bet me £20 Palace would finish above United this year. Needed ammo to shut him down. Stats show United won 60% of these matchups but Palace made them ugly wins. Told him “look at the foul counts and late goals – your lot just annoy better teams into mistakes.” He still won’t pay up though. Typical.