Cristiano Ronaldo on course for just four LaLiga goals this season

The 10-point gap between Real Madrid and LaLiga leaders Barcelona is, in part, a consequence of the goalscoring drought that Cristiano Ronaldo is going through. The striker is enduring his worst start to a league season since arriving in Spain in 2009: with 12 games played, he has mustered just one goal (albeit having missed Real's first four Primera División matches due to suspension).

At this stage of the 2014/15 LaLiga campaign, Cristiano had 20 goals...

It's a meagre return that falls well short of the 20 that he had bagged at the same stage of the 2014/15 LaLiga campaign, or the 14 that he had notched up by this time in 2010/11 and 2011/12. Previously, his worst scoring figures after Real's opening 12 league games had come in his first year in Madrid, when he found the net five times in the period - four more goals than 2017/18 has so far yielded.

And when broken down into a shots-to-goals percentage, Cristiano's numbers make for equally grim reading. The 32-year-old's single goal this term - struck against Getafe in week 8 - has come from a total of 55 shots, leaving the former Manchester United and Sporting CP man with a lowly strike rate of just 1.8%. In past seasons, he has finished with a percentage as high as 21.3% (2014/15), and even in his least effective campaign to date - 2009/10 - he still managed 12.3%.

Current strike rate leaves CR7 on course for single-figure goal haul

If he maintains his present rate in front of goal in LaLiga, Cristiano will reach the end of the season with a miserable four goals.

Or, to put the Portugal captain's plight another way: if he is to equal his highest ever Primera División total of 48 goals while continuing at his current ratio of one every 55 attempts, he will need to take a whopping 2640 shots to do so! That personal-best LaLiga haul - achieved in 2014/15 - came in just 225...