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Leaders from start to finish?

Jose Mourinho has come closest to a wire-to-wire season in the Premier League © PA Photos

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Has any team stayed at the top of the Premier League from the start to the finish of a season? Brown, Nigeria.

The short answer is no. However, Chelsea have a claim to have done that. Jose Mourinho's team of 2005-06 were champions and, by winning each of their first nine league games, made a perfect start to the season.

Nevertheless, the fixture list means that, technically, they were not top throughout. The season began on August 13, but Chelsea did not play until the following day, when they beat Wigan 1-0. That took them from 13th - because 12 other teams had picked up at least a point the previous day - to sixth place, but only behind early-season pacesetters Charlton on goal difference.

The following weekend, and for the second round of fixtures, Chelsea again played on the Sunday. So they slipped down to ninth on the Saturday before a 1-0 win against Arsenal took them up to fourth, level on points with Tottenham, who were top, but with an inferior goal difference.

The third round of games came in the following midweek. Chelsea, who played on Wednesday, again kicked off after many other teams, and dropped to fifth on Tuesday night. When Mourinho's team beat West Brom 4-0 on the Wednesday, they went top. It was August 24 and from then on, they remained in front until the campaign concluded on May 7. So while Chelsea were briefly behind others, they never trailed anyone who had played the same number of games except on goal difference.

In the old Division One, by the way, Tottenham's Double winners of 1960-61 were top after they had played each of their 42 league games. However, unlike Mourinho's Chelsea, their early season fixtures were before those of some of their rivals and so, when Sheffield Wednesday won their second game, they displaced Spurs at the top on goal average. To confuse matters, however, had goal difference been the deciding factor when teams were level on points, as it now is, Tottenham would have remained in first place.

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