With Arsenal drawing a lot of criticism for a trophy drought in the last 8 years (their last trophy being the 2005 FA Cup), it is a good time to objectively look at the frequency at which some of Europe’s big clubs have won trophies – domestic and continental – over the past six decades.
We decided to cull data from 1950 onwards (mainly because the European competitions started with the European cup in 1955) and to keep the analysis simple, we looked at three major types of trophies – the League title, any european titles (either the European Cup/Champions League or UEFA Cup/Europa League or UEFA Cup Winners Cup) and the major domestic league cup competition (FA Cup, Copa Del Rey etc.) for 9 major European clubs – 4 from the EPL (Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool), 2 each from the Serie A (Juventus and AC Milan) and La Liga (Real Madrid and Barcelona) and one from the Bundesliga (Bayern Munich). We looked at five parameters – the longest stretch a team has gone without winning a trophy from 1950-2012, the average gap (years) between winning a trophy (total trophyless years divided by the number of trophies won), any stretches of trophy-less years that were 5 seasons or longer and finally the number of years when the teams won at least one trophy.
The numbers are quite fascinating – Real Madrid, one of Europe’s legendary clubs, have 42 trophy winning seasons while Bayern Munich have had 31 trophy winning seasons but have won multiple trophies on 11 occasions compared to Real’s 7. Arsenal’s current stretch is not their longest with no silverware although ironically they lead that statistic with an 18 year gap between 1953 and 1971.
The most amazing stat? Real have never had a run between 1950-2012 where they have gone without a trophy for 5 years or more! How’s that for consistency!
