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Whilst arranging my end of season numbers, which I'll be posting around the SBnation football sites over the next week, I came across the percentage of minutes played for each player.

The usual method used of telling us, the fans, of how much any given player played for his side is total minutes played, I think those numbers can be taken and turned into a percentage using the total minutes the team played in the season. By using this we can come up with a depth chart for each position and this can tell us a few things.

-Who was used the most

-who was available for selection considering injuries and suspension

-Who was trusted by the manager

After the jump I'll introduce you to something I'll call ToP(time on pitch) %

Spurs played 3591 minutes in the EPL for an average of 94.5 minutes per game.

Each players % is of the total mins they individually played against the total number of minutes the team played. An example X player plays 360 minutes of the 3605 minutes Spurs played this season and thus has a ToP of 10%

So the Tottenham depth chart looks like this.

GK

.

Defenders

Walker 3230 mins 89.5% ToP%

Ekotto 2962 mins 82.1% ToP%

Kaboul 2903 mins 80.5% ToP%

King 1795 mins 49.7% ToP%

Gallas 1325 mins 36.7% ToP%

Dawson 548 mins 15.2% ToP%

Corluka 311 mins 0.086% ToP%

Nelson 109 mins 0.030% ToP%

Spurs have been blessed here with some consistency in terms of selection, lack of injuries and suspensions. The full backs, Ekotto and Walker have played heavy minutes and excelled this season. We always knew about Ledly King's knee problems, hell look at the blog's name, and he was about in the range to be expected having a 49.7 ToP% number. Yet, it was Kaboul here who won the game of last man standing. He was the only consistently fit centre half and this is reflected in his ToP number. King, Gallas and Dawson were all struck by the injury bug. A regular centre half partner for Kaboul would go a long way in helping Tottenham next season.

Midfielders/Wingers

Bale 3217 mins 89.2% ToP%

Modric 3216 mins 89.2% ToP%

Van Der Vaart 2321 mins 64.3% ToP%

Parker 2475 mins 68.6% ToP%

Lennon 1581 mins 43.8% ToP%

Sandro 1416 mins 39.2% ToP%

Livermore 838 mins 23.2% ToP%

Kranjcar 639 mins 17.7% ToP%

Huddleston 60 mins 0.016% ToP%

We can clearly see a consistency in team selection and shape here, Bale 89.2% ToP, Modric 89.2% ToP were the main players. It takes a rare level of consistency and physical condition to play around 90% of the teams available minutes in the EPL. Only Jonas Guiterrez has played more in the teams I have looked at so far.

We can see Van der Vaart was heavily used also, and probably heavily subbed, Lennon had injuries which limited his ToP % number. Sandro began to establish himself more as the season progressed and looked an improved player. Huddlestone was the unfortunate one here, all teams have injuries but it remains a cruel stroke of misfortunat when a player misses an entire season. Let's hope to see him back fully fit next season.

Strikers

Adebayor 2841 mins 78.8% ToP%

Defoe 1287 mins 35.7% ToP%

Saha 396 mins 10.9% ToP%

Pavlyuchenko 128 mins 0.035% ToP%

So, at first glance this group looks light, a man short at the minimum. Adebayor had a great season by the statistical counts, he was Spurs' undisputed #1 striker with a ToP% of 78.8, he scored 17 goals, had the most oassist of any EPL striker with 11 and was 9th in the EPL by my DSB rating for strikers with a score of 103.6 (around 30 seems to be the perfect-ish DSB rating over a full season, RVP was 34.5).

Defoe was a distant #2 striker and got 11 goals in his relatively few minutes played. Saha was never the answer and will soon be released. I would expect a similar fate awaits Pavlyuchenko. That leaves just Defoe, who nearly went to Liverpool in January, and the excellent Adebayor who returns to parent club Man City, although, I expect a deal to be worked out for the players rights.

All told we can see which area Spurs need to strengthen this summer.

Further reading

Chelsea's 2011/12 depth chart by minutes played

Man Utd's depth chart by minutes played

2011/1 EPL table by points conceded

Thanks for reading. I write for Bitter and Blue on the SBNation network.

Twitter @ Benjamin Pugsley