Messi is averaging his best-ever goals-and-assists ratio at 31

Searching for statistics to sum up Lionel Messi's ludicrous season, you are spoilt for choice.

Most goals in Europe's big five leagues: Messi, 14. Most assists: Messi, 10. Only Dimitri Payet has created more chances and only Nice's Allan Saint-Maximin has completed more dribbles.

Messi has even outscored the entire team of Valencia in La Liga, despite missing almost a month with a fractured arm. After all that, 'ludicrous' begins to feel like the appropriate word.

We could continue to name super stats until blue in the face. Another one which cropped up this week was that, for the ninth consecutive calendar year, Messi has scored 50 or more goals.

He hit his half-century for 2018 in spectacular fashion. Barcelona beat Levante 5-0 on Sunday and, as strange as it sounds, the home side held the own for the majority of the match.

The difference was Messi, who helped himself to three goals and assisted the two others.

He and Cristiano Ronaldo have, in the politest possible way, shown themselves to be footballing freaks of nature for some time. You only have to look at Real Madrid to realise their influence.

Without Ronaldo, who joined Juventus in the summer, Real are languishing in fourth. They have scored 24 goals, almost half as many as Barcelona, while Ronaldo has 11 to himself in Serie A.

It highlights the importance of these blokes who bring the X Factor on an almost weekly basis.

Of course it helps that Messi has Luis Suarez by his side, with the former Liverpool forward having scored 11 times in La Liga himself. Ousmane Dembele and Phillipe Coutinho are on hand, too.

Yet the individual numbers being produced by Messi makes a mockery of how he finished in fifth place for the Ballon d'Or. The same goes for The Best awards, where he also finished fifth.

Luka Modric won both of those honours and the Croatian midfielder certainly had a fine 2018.

He won the Champions League and led his nation to the World Cup final, and ultimately broke Ronaldo and Messi's 10-year Ballon d'Or duopoly as a result.

Ronaldo finished runner-up and we saw how the attacker adapted his game in his later years with Real. He became a fox in the box, with 42 of his 44 goals in 2017-18 coming from inside the area.

One would expect the same of Messi, though each of his three goals against Levante were different. It came a week after he dispatched two direct free-kicks against Espanyol, too.

The 2011-12 season remains Messi's greatest. He scored 73 goals and set up 29, leaving him with a total involvement of 102. It meant he enjoyed a goal or assist on average every 51 minutes.

So far this season, he has been involved in 32 goals. At the age of 31, it hands him an average of 48. Ridiculously, it is his best-ever ratio.

Not bad at all for the fifth best player in the world.