With more than half the season gone, we have enough stats to get a good idea of how well Premier League teams have been playing and therefore how things are likely to unfold in the months ahead.
Expected goals tells us how well teams do the basics of football by creating lots of good chances up front and limiting their opponents to few, difficult ones at the back.
With the figures based on how Premier League teams have performed in the past, history shows that the higher a team’s xG difference – the more they dominate games – the more chance they have of success.
So what do the stats tell us? If sides keep performing at around the level they have so far, then…
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Despite what Pep Guardiola says, the title race is a two-horse contest, with Arsenal the best team in the league and likely winners
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With three spots probably taken already, the remaining Champions League place (or two) will be a fight between Liverpool, Manchester United, Newcastle and Chelsea
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The relegation battle is probably over as Nottingham Forest and Leeds are playing much better overall than West Ham
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Aston Villa and Sunderland’s results have been more impressive than their general performances so their hot form will likely cool as the season goes on
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Wolves have been better than their points tally (though still not good) and will comfortably avoid breaking Derby’s 11-point record of being the worst Premier League side ever
The good news for Arsenal fans is that the team with the highest xG difference have won the Premier League in three of the past four seasons.
The exception came in 2023-24 when Manchester City won the title despite Arsenal having the best underlying numbers.
It’s interesting that Arsenal aren’t dominating games as much as they did two years ago, but City aren’t the unstoppable force they have been in previous seasons under Guardiola either.
In the race for the Champions League, it might surprise you to see Manchester United rank so highly in xG given that Ruben Amorim has just been sacked and his 32% win rate in the Premier League has been well publicised.
But while his overall reign can be seen as a failure, the Red Devils were improving under him before he was shown the door and new interim manager Michael Carrick inherits a team that has been performing like a top-six side in recent months.
If we compare teams’ xG difference with the points they’ve taken this season, we can clearly see in the chart below that the majority of sides’ results align closely with their general performance.
But there are three teams who have so far defied their xG numbers, in either a good way, or a bad way: Aston Villa, Sunderland and Wolves.
Aston Villa and Sunderland have almost certainly achieved their season objectives already, with Opta giving Villa a 96% chance of Champions League football and the Black Cats a 99% chance of survival.
This isn’t about whether the two sides ‘deserve’ to be where they are in the table. The fact that they’ve scored and kept out the goals they have means they have earned those positions, thanks in part to Villa’s elite long-range finishing and Sunderland keeper Robin Roefs being the best-performing shot-stopper in the league.
But what it does show is that this season’s success is built on shaky ground and there’s still work to be done if Villa wish to establish themselves at the top of the Premier League long-term and Sunderland are to avoid suffering second-season syndrome next season.
Villa fans will rightly point out that their team have regularly overperformed their xG under Unai Emery, while Sunderland fans will claim that you can’t measure tenacity and togetherness.
But if we look at the points and xG difference of the 200 Premier League teams in the past decade, it really shows how freakishly efficient the two sides have been in taking as many points as they have this season, with their dots in the chart far from the rest.
At the other end, while Wolves are playing like a team worthy of relegation, they have been far better than the two-point tally they had until recently so it’s no real surprise their results have begun to improve.
Two examples of why teams can only cheat their xG for so long are Tottenham and Leeds this season.
Early results misleadingly suggested that Thomas Frank’s team were strong Champions League contenders and Daniel Farke’s side were in for a long, tough struggle.
But Tottenham‘s xG was far worse than their points tally implied, while Leeds‘ was much better.
As the season has gone on, their results (the black line below) have steadily been pulled like a magnet by their xG (the yellow line) and are now more reflective of how they’ve actually been playing this season.
The expected goals measure isn’t perfect and there are aspects of football that can never be captured on a spreadsheet, but history shows that it has a great track record for predicting a team’s long-term success.
Will Arsenal win the title that they statistically ‘deserve’? Will Aston Villa and Sunderland continue to ‘cheat’ their xG numbers? We’ll soon find out…
