In my last post I looked at 'Howexciting is the Premier League' and produced the interesting data point
that less than 10% of Premier League games are goal-less. This may be
interesting, and it might even count as insight, but it's not very
actionable. We can't do anything with it, or make any decisions from
it. I suppose the question is, "Is that a lot?" and I'll be
looking at that question in more detail in future.
So,
my next step is to look at how the different teams in the Premier League
compare on some of the key metrics that I discussed - goals per game (total
conceded plus scored), percentage of goalless games and so on.
Number of goals per game (conceded plus scored)
Firstly, I segmented the data per team: how many goals were there per game for each team in the Premier League. This is time-consuming, but worthwhile, and a sample of the data is shown below. I have data as far back as the 2004-5 season, but the width wouldn't fit on this page:
Club
|
Y2010
|
Y2011
|
Y2012
|
Y2013
|
Y2014
|
Y2015
|
Y2016
|
Arsenal
|
2.58
|
3.03
|
3.24
|
2.87
|
2.87
|
2.82
|
2.66
|
Aston Villa
|
2.21
|
2.82
|
2.37
|
3.05
|
2.63
|
2.32
|
2.71
|
2.50
|
|||||||
2.79
|
2.76
|
3.32
|
|||||
2.61
|
2.84
|
3.24
|
|||||
Charlton
|
2.47
|
||||||
2.32
|
2.68
|
2.92
|
3.00
|
2.58
|
2.76
|
2.95
|
|
2.13
|
2.58
|
2.37
|
|||||
Everton
|
2.32
|
2.53
|
2.37
|
2.50
|
2.63
|
2.58
|
3.00
|
Fulham
|
2.58
|
2.42
|
2.61
|
2.89
|
3.29
|
||
2.21
|
2.71
|
2.29
|
3.00
|
3.97
|
2.63
|
2.97
|
|
1.92
|
2.45
|
3.21
|
2.63
|
3.66
|
3.18
|
2.95
|
|
Man United
|
2.89
|
3.03
|
3.21
|
3.39
|
2.82
|
2.61
|
2.21
|
2.45
|
|||||||
2.24
|
2.97
|
2.82
|
2.97
|
2.68
|
2.71
|
2.87
|
|
3.11
|
2.61
|
2.37
|
2.79
|
||||
2.29
|
|||||||
2.87
|
2.63
|
2.29
|
2.63
|
||||
Tottenham
|
2.92
|
2.66
|
2.82
|
2.95
|
2.79
|
2.92
|
2.74
|
3.34
|
2.55
|
2.89
|
2.68
|
2.34
|
2.16
|
||
2.53
|
2.66
|
2.74
|
3.16
|
||||
Season Average
|
2.77
|
2.80
|
2.81
|
2.80
|
2.77
|
2.57
|
2.70
|
Blank columns indicate a season where a team was not in the Premier League.
Bold figures show where a team achieved over 3 goals per game for the season.
Y2008 indicates the season 2007-2008.
Firstly:
sorting alphabetically makes sense from a listing perspective, but for
comparison the data is best sorted numerically (from highest to lowest).
Secondly: There's a lot of data here, and clearly a visualisation is needed: I'm going with a line graph. And to avoid spaghetti, I'm going to highlight some of the key teams - the team with the highest average number of goals per game; the team with the lowest, and the average.
Thirdly: to identify the overall highest- and lowest-goal teams, I'm just going to take the totals of the averages for the last nine seasons, and sort them from the list. Teams that were not in the Premier League for one or more seasons are included based on their performance while they were in the Premier League.
Premier League Teams: Average number of goals per game over the last 12 seasons:
Club
|
Club
|
Average
|
Arsenal
|
2.842
|
Tottenham
|
2.833
|
2.825
|
|
2.816
|
|
Man United
|
2.807
|
2.781
|
|
2.751
|
|
2.717
|
|
2.705
|
|
Overall Average
|
2.702
|
2.671
|
|
2.670
|
|
2.669
|
|
Aston Villa
|
2.667
|
Fulham
|
2.613
|
2.605
|
|
2.566
|
|
Everton
|
2.518
|
Charlton
|
2.474
|
2.404
|
|
2.368
|
|
2.360
|
Key takeaways:
- Arsenal have had the most total goals per game over the last nine seasons (2.842 goals per game)
-
Everton have the lowest average number of goals per game for teams which have
been present in all 12 seasons (2.518 goals per game).
- Put another way: Arsenal fans have seen 1296 league goals in the last 12 seasons, compared to 1148 for Everton fans (148 fewer).
- Put another way: Arsenal fans have seen 1296 league goals in the last 12 seasons, compared to 1148 for Everton fans (148 fewer).
Time for some graphs!
Firstly, average goals per season, for the last 12 seasons, for Arsenal, Everton, the league average,
This shows clearly that Arsenal (green line) have consistently exceed the league average, falling below it only twice in the last 12 seasons. Everton (blue) have only once exceeded the average, and that was in the most recent season.
Connecting this to 'real life' events:
- Everton moving from David Moyes to Roberton Martinez in August 2013 did not make any difference to their 'excitement' factor until the 2015-16 season.
- Brendan Rogers had an interesting time at
Secondly, adjusting the data to show the difference between each team and the overall average (so that the data shows a delta versus the average).
To give you an
indication of Liverpool 's remarkable 2013-4
season: their games had more than one goal per game more than the season average. Brendan
Rogers had an eventful time at Liverpool .
Fulham also had an 'exciting' season in 2013-4, achieving 3.29 goals per game (average was 2.77) - but were subsequently relegated.
In summary:
-
Arsenal have had the highest average goals per game over the last nine seasons
(2.842 goals per game), while Everton
have the lowest, at 2.518 goals per game.
- Arsenal have exceeded the league average goals per game in 10 out of the last 12 seasons, and have the highest average overall.
- Arsenal have exceeded the league average goals per game in 10 out of the last 12 seasons, and have the highest average overall.
-
Man United have achieved above-average goals per game in nine of the last 12
seasons; however the 2015-16 season was the least 'exciting' they've recorded
in that period.
Review
Segmenting
the data by team is proving more useful. It's now possible to make
predictions about the 2016-17 season:
-
Arsenal to remain most 'exciting', closely followed by Tottenham and Man City
-
Everton to remain the least 'exciting', with 1-1, 2-1 and 2-0 results
dominating.
-
Man United are extremely unpredictable, especially as they have a new manager
this season (although nobody could have predicted the dreadful start they've
made to the current season).
The raw data used in this analysis is available from the football data website, among others.
