The Week in Stats: Bournemouth make a giant leap

We take a closer look at the numbers behind the headlines, including a big leap for Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth.

This week we examine how the Premier League’s top sides have developed regarding chance creation, what clubs are lagging way behind the pack in Europe’s top leagues, and which players are producing the most big chances in the Premier League.

The Premier League’s top six

By comparing the top six Premier League teams’ expected goals (xG) figures after the first 12 games of this campaign and the 2017-18 season, we can gauge how clubs are progressing in terms of creating and preventing chances.

Manchester City, Liverpool and Spurs are all performing at pretty much the same level in xG terms, despite the constant griping in recent months about Liverpool’s attacking play.

One recent narrative that is supported, however, is that Arsenal enjoyed a considerable amount of good fortune during their long winning streak. They’ve actually performed far worse in terms of chance creation than at the same point last season.

In contrast, the improved league positions of both Chelsea and Bournemouth are based on a dramatic upswing in chance creation, with their latter more than doubling their effectiveness compared to 2017-18.

Similarly, expected goals against (xGA) measures the quality of the chances that a team has allowed opponents. City and Chelsea are at more or less the same level, but the figures support the notion that Liverpool have performed much better as a defensive unit this season. Arsenal are again doing worse in this metric than in 2017-18, although it’s Spurs who have suffered the most dramatic downturn in defensive terms.

Thinking big

Next we’ll turn to the Premier League’s leading big chance creators. To recap, a big chance is a scoring opportunity that your grandmother would stand a fair chance of converting.

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While he wouldn’t have been many people’s choice at the start of the season to lead the EPL in this metric, Bournemouth’s Ryan Fraser is currently way out in front, having already made 13 big chances for his team-mates.

The Scottish wide man looks set to comfortably surpass Kevin De Bruyne’s leading total of 19 in the last Premier League campaign. And Fraser could easily come close to the biggest EPL figure in the past three seasons, when Mesut Oezil created 28 during 2015-16. The highest total among the major European leagues in recent years was Lionel Messi’s 37 in that same season.

One thing is immediately clear from looking at the passes with which Fraser has created those opportunities: he can hurt opponents from pretty much anywhere in the opposition half.

Another Bournemouth player, Callum Wilson, is also among the Premier League’s top five in this metric, which goes some way to explaining why he recently earned his first England call-up. The other spots are taken by Chelsea’s Eden Hazard, evergreen Manchester City midfielder David Silva and, perhaps most surprisingly of all, Watford left-back Jose Holebas.

All bar two of Silva’s passes came from inside the penalty area, and every one of them was made well within the final third of the pitch. In contrast, Holebas has created three big chances from corners and just one from inside the box. For the record, the Hazard pass that goes out for a thrown-in is due to a close-range Alvaro Morata fresh-air shot against Everton.

Zeroing in

Finally, as we’re now a third of the way into the season, many outliers are starting to look less like freak occurrences and more like potential signs of something important. So here we’ll identify some top-line stats that teams have yet to register in even once.

Despite Bournemouth being the Premier League’s fifth-highest scorers — above both Spurs and Manchester United — they’re still yet to manage a single league goal from outside the penalty area. And of the 11 teams that haven’t netted from outside the box, five others are from the Premier League, while none play in the Bundesliga.

Suso has four of Milan’s goals from outside the area and Dries Mertens has three for Napoli, whereas each of Manchester City’s strikes have come from a different player. Napoli have yet to score a single header in Serie A, however.

Last season, Real Madrid ended with 16 league goals from inside the six-yard box and 20 from set pieces, but they’ve yet to manage either during the current campaign.

Meanwhile, Lionel Messi’s already hit the woodwork six times in the league alone, and Manchester City again lead the way in terms of left-footed finishes. That perhaps shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, though, as nobody in the major European leagues scored more left-footed goals than City last season – 43 in total – and that was before they bought Riyad Mahrez over the summer.