Job far from done for Man Utd as points record still in their sights

Sir Alex Ferguson has previously stated that he would be delighted to break Chelsea’s record of the highest points total in a Premier League season and doing so remains possible should they win their final four games of the campaign.

With their 20th top-flight title now in the bag after a 3-0 win over Aston Villa, there will be a temptation to take it easy for the duration of the season.

One thing that Sir Alex Ferguson doesn’t have to do is pick fringe players to reach 10 appearances for the season to entitle them to a Premier League medal. Only Anders Lindegaard may need selection as he is currently stuck on eight starts.

The Red Devils have 84 points at present, 11 points adrift of Chelsea’s total of 95 in the 2004/05 campaign, but they still have four games remaining.

It is 8/1 that the points record is broken this season and on six occasions in the past Man Utd have won all of their remaining games once the title was wrapped up. Therefore, this may be a reasonable price.

What is worth noting though is that on four of these six occasions, they were only confirmed champions with one fixture left, including in both 2009 and 2011.

In the five instances in which they had the luxury of playing two or more games when already confirmed as champions, they only embarked on a 100 per cent winning run twice.

Most memorable was in 2000 when they did what they will have to do this season and won each of their last four fixtures, which extended their victorious sequence to 11 consecutive league outings overall.

What remains for Man Utd is a trip to Arsenal, back-to-back home games with Chelsea and Swansea and a visit to West Brom on the final day of the season.

The good news is that they have triumphed on three of their last four visits to the Emirates, won two of their three Premier League clashes with Swansea and secured maximum points on all six Premier League visits to the Hawthorns.

This indicates that Chelsea are the potential banana skin to the points record being broken, as Man Utd have won only one of their four meetings already this season, although they have prevailed in three of the last four encounters at Old Trafford.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.