Hello again, and good luck for tonight's game.

I have written about several Premier league teams already which can be found on my twitter *link* , so I thought I'd look at Man United next

Player Usage Charts is an experimental examination of a clubs player usage using starts, sub appearances and minutes played. We will solely be looking at the Premier League today.

Further right means more starts. Lower means more subs. Size of the bubble indicates minutes played.

Red=defenders, yellow=midfielders, orange=wide forwards, green=strikers

Defenders are naturally the most consistently selected (and least subbed) of the outfield players and we can clearly see that Man United have been able to select a pretty settled back line.

Carrick is the undisputed, and heavily worked, #1 midfielder. Cleverley is next in line and then we see a collection of plug and play midfielders in Giggs, Scholes and the injured Anderson and Jones, if required.

Young and Valencia are the wide players who have featured the most.

van Persie, unsurprisingly, is the #1 striker. Rooney has featured less than he had hoped to, but fitness and injury has played a part in his decreased usage. Henandez, and to a lesser extent Welbeck, are the impact subs who occasionally start when injury had knocked Rooney out of the lineup or soft opposition was available.

There is clear evidence of a core set of players that have been available for selection and whom Ferguson trusts. Evra, Rafael, Fedinand, Evans are the back line, Carrick is the midfielder and van Persie is the #1 striker. Rotation and injuryrules the remaining players.

Any thoughts?