Welcome to the Football Reporters. This week we're joined by Sam Tithers. He talks about the luck index and which teams have been most lucky and unlucky in the Premier League so far this season.

We're also going to talk about Cristiana Ronaldo and his quest for a thousand goals and look at player care in the Premier League and the growth of the phenomenon that is sweeping clubs.

Well, if there's one thing that unites all football fans, it's the feeling that their team has been the one that's been hard done by.

Sam, you've had the unenaviable task of putting together

a luck index to try and quantify how lucky or unlucky teams have been so far this season. Can you

just explain the areas that you looked at, what you were kind of looking to put into this piece

and what you came up with? Yeah, it's a tough task. But I was willing to challenge the idea that luck evens out over the course of the season, which I think Var has done a good job of suggesting that maybe it doesn't. And also suggest, challenge the idea that you play every team twice. Because ultimately, if you end up playing Manchester City and they're

missing Erland Harland, that is going to change the complexion for you. And the same can be said

for Arsenal without Saka. And last season in particular, if Mohamed Sala had missed any games,

then it would have been a very different game. So is there anything that we can track through

the season to see how that context applies was my

question? So I had to figure out what was I going to be picking out here. And injury issues is

certainly one of them. So I'm still being clear of like a handful of injuries here. Like if a,

if a real star player or a particular team's MVP is missing, then I'm going to note that down.

I'm also going to try and notice when entire

position groups are injured as well and missing. And there's been a couple of examples of that,

like if all your centre midfielders are injured or all your right backs or all your left backs,

that's going to put you in a very tough spot. I'm also a believer in the new manager bounce.

I don't know about you guys, but I am a believer.

So the next team up after that tends to be the unlucky one because they probably would have

preferred to play them the week before, before the guy got sacked. And then the last tranche is

confirmed refereeing errors. So we've got six so far this season where the KMI panel have a judge

...