Manchester United striker Anthony Martial has equalled Jamie Vardy as the fastest footballer in this season’s Barclays Premier League, according to records kept by EA Sports’ Player Performance Index.
The French hot-shot managed to clock an incredible speed of 22 miles per hour over five seconds when Louis van Gaal’s Reds drew 3-3 against Newcastle at St James’ Park earlier this month, which is exactly the same speed registered by Leicester forward and top scorer Vardy earlier in the campaign.
The EA Sports PPI is the Premier League’s official rating index that measures a player’s contribution to his team using six key indices. The intention is to “remove any opinion bias and only work with proven statistical measurements” which become more accurate as the season progresses.
Here are the Premier League’s six fastest players after 22 matches played:
FASTEST IN 2015/16 PREMIER LEAGUESPEED
1: ANTHONY MARTIAL22 MPH
2: JAMIE VARDY22 MPH
3: JEFFREY SCHLUPP21.9 MPH
4: KYLE WALKER21.8 MPH
5: DIVOCK ORIGI21.8 MPH
6: PAUL DUMMETT21.8 MPH
The identity of United’s fastest player has been debated among the first-team squad for the last 12 months with Chris Smalling, Antonio Valencia, Luke Shaw, Ashley Young and Wayne Rooney all among the leading contenders. Yet that debate was eventually put to rest when the captain was clocked at 35 kilometres per hour during the 3-1 win over Aston Villa in April 2015, as explained in our statistical story.
Interestingly, Rooney’s figure from last campaign equates to 21.74 MPH and that is, of course, just slightly slower than Martial’s top speed registered against the Magpies.
Source: manutd.com
