In-depth stats comparison of Lionel Messi to Ronaldo this season shows he deserves respect

Lionel Messi has been the butt of a lot of jokes at Paris Saint-Germain this season.

It's certainly not been all sunshine and rainbows for the seven-time Ballon d'Or winner since kissing goodbye to Barcelona with his terrible goalscoring record in Ligue 1 having been widely slammed.

To be fair, it certainly is eyebrow-raising that one of the greatest goalscorers in history has made it all the way until January with just a single league goal despite having made 12 appearances.

It's a situation made all the more awkward by the fact that Cristiano Ronaldo has largely impressed on the back of his own summer move to Manchester United with eight goals in the Premier League.

Both players have performed well in the Champions League with Messi trailing Ronaldo by just a single goal, but it's those starkly-contrasting league scoring statistics that really do stand out.

As such, here at GIVEMESPORT, we wanted to do some more digging to find out if Messi really has been as poor in the league compared to Ronaldo as the goalscoring data would suggest he has.

To achieve that, we've turned to the Squawka comparison matrix and chosen 33 metrics that we believe best represent the jobs required of Messi and Ronaldo in their respective positions.

We've then applied the 'per 90' filter to ensure that Messi won't be unfairly handicapped due to his fewer appearances and then tallied up who won the most statistical measures for a full comparison.

Pretty straightforward, right? Well, first and foremost, be sure to check out the stats that were used, who came out on top for each one of them and then keep scrolling the see the overall victor below.

Lionel Messi 18-15 Cristiano Ronaldo

Right, ok, so does this necessarily mean that Messi has enjoyed