Les dernières nouvelles sportives(Latest sports news)

For the purposes of levelling out the competition, only La Liga games will be considered for this area.

Cristiano Ronaldo leads the entirety of Europe's top five leagues in terms of shots per game, recording an average of 7.4 attempts on goal in each league match he plays in.

No other player from England, Spain, France, Italy or Germany even manages to register an average of six shots per game.

Messi isn't too far behind, in third place on that particular ranking, averaging 5.3 per game.

How does their January form stand up to the season-long average then?

Against Sociedad, Ronaldo was in no mood to let anything stand in his way. He rattled off a massive 14 shots during the game, hitting the back of the net in the 68th and 70th minutes. Nobody else reached five attempts during that fixture.

For once, though, he was not the main man in terms of shots on goal in the 5-0 win over Valencia, attempting only three shots—and two of them ended up as goals.

Ronaldo was back to his average level most recently, with seven shots and three goals (one penalty) against Getafe.

The Portuguese attacker has averaged eight shots per league game in 2013, along with 2.7 dribbles and one key pass per game. His shots and dribbles are above his averages for the entire season, while his key passes for teammates are slightly down.

Messi, conversely, has taken 21 shots in his four league games this year, averaging out at 5.25 per match—almost exactly continuing his average rate for the season.

He also recorded averages per game of 3.25 dribbles and 1.75 key passes, which are also both close to his usual average.

One final point to note is that Messi's 21 shots yielded seven goals, a 33 percent shot conversion rate which is better than his already-excellent season average of 30 percent.

Ronaldo's 24 shots brought him seven goals also, a 29 percent conversion rate which issignificantly higher than his season average of just 14 percent.