Expected Goals – How the Premier League table could / should look after 8 matches | OneFootball

Expected Goals is widely agreed to be the best way of measuring how well Premier League clubs play in any particular game.

To get a better look at how sides are doing, the Expected Goals (xG) metric allows you to get a better picture of just how teams are performing.

Expected goals (xG) is a statistic used to work out how many goals should be scored in a match.

With every single shot awarded an xG value based on the difficulty of the attempt, with factors including distance from goal, type of shot and number of defenders present affecting the value.

The higher the xG of a particular shot, the more likely a goal should be scored from that shot.

The xG value of every shot in a game is then used to calculate the expected goals in a particular match.

So rather than just the usual basic statistics of how many shots each team has, Expected Goals factors in where shots were taken from and how good a chance was and whether defenders in the way etc.

This is the up to date Premier League table after eight games BUT based on Expected Goals stats – Table via Understat:

So the best performing three at both ends are:

Expected Goals

18.78 Newcastle United

18.74 Liverpool

18.26 Brighton

Expected Goals Against

5.48 Man City

7.84 Newcastle United

7.85 Arsenal

These Expected Goals stats back up what I feel has been the case this season, what I have seen with my own eyes.

Newcastle United creating a lot of great chances, getting into a lot of good positions, but not getting the number of goals they deserve, even though only Brighton (21) have scored more than the 20 for Newcastle United. We have seen some great saves from the likes of Alisson and others.

Whilst at the other end, only Manchester City restricting opposition clubs to fewer good quality chances than Newcastle United. Largely explained I think by a very high proportion of those chances ending up with brilliant finishes, such as the two scored by Nunez for Liverpool and Alvarez for Man City.

Expected Points

17.97 Man City

16.34 Newcastle United

15.40 Chelsea

This is interesting as well.

The underlying stats pointing to Man City as the best performing team this season BUT Newcastle United clear second best performers, with Chelsea third!