The Week in Stats: Man United are still under-performing

This week we look at Liverpool’s brilliance, the teams that are doing especially well (or badly) at home, and the most uneventful game of the season.

Yes, Manchester United did manage to eke out a win over Spurs on Sunday. But Ole Gunnar Solskjaer still failed to break the run of United being outperformed in xG terms every time they’ve come up against a big team in the Premier League this season.

Looking on the right-hand side of the dotted blue line at the Premier League games since Solskjaer’s appointment, which was made in between the matches against Liverpool and Cardiff, there are clear signs of improvement in United’s league displays.

But closer examination of their relative performances on matchdays 3, 9, 12, 15, 17 and 22 shows that United have been second-best in chance creation in both games against Tottenham and the clashes with Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City.

Speaking of Liverpool, the charts above show their top-line stats after 22 league games for this season and stretching back to the last two occasions when they came close to winning the Premier League, namely 2008-09 and 2013-14.

Liverpool have scored slightly fewer goals than Brendan Rodgers’ deliriously exciting Luis Suarez-led team had done by this point in 2014, and they’d netted one more goal in Juergen Klopp’s first full season (2016-17) as well.

The most glaring difference is of course in defense, where Liverpool have conceded four fewer times than even Rafa Benitez’s parsimonious back line had in 2008-09.

Moving on to look at La Liga’s big three, all of whom won last weekend, Zinedine Zidane’s decision to jump ship in the summer is looking wiser with every passing month. Despite enjoying some good moments since Santiago Solari’s appointment in late October, it’s still Real Madrid’s lowest points total at this stage of the season during the entire decade.

Meanwhile, Barcelona’s dip from last term helps to explain why their fans aren’t quite as happy as you might expect for a club that have been top of La Liga since October and qualified from their Champions League group with two games to spare.

Home truths

One of the easiest ways to judge a team’s relative home and away performances is to look at their points per game (PPG) stats. Subtracting away PPG from home PPG gives us an easy gauge of how reliant a side are on their home displays.

Tottenham’s woes at Wembley are underlined here. Teams have been averaging 0.39 points per game more at home so far, but Spurs are picking up 0.7 more PPG in their away matches.

Bayern Munich’s disappointing form at the Allianz Arena under Niko Kovac also stands out. They’ve only earned 1.88 PPG at home this season and have already dropped more Bundesliga points in Munich than they did during the whole of the last campaign, when they averaged 2.59 PPG there.

Borussia Moenchengladbach are the only side to still have a perfect home league record, having won all eight games at the Borussia-Park stadium during the Hinrunde. They’re closely followed by Liverpool, Dortmund and Juventus, who’ve each drawn a single match at home while winning the rest. Serie A’s Frosinone are the one side in Europe’s top four leagues yet to win a league match at home this term.

A quick look at the final numbers for last season shows that playing at the Stadio Olimpico wasn’t at all kind to either Lazio or Roma, although the home form of both sides has been better this term.

Arsenal were incredibly reliant upon their performances at the Emirates in Arsene Wenger’s final season, averaging 2.47 PPG at home but just 0.84 PPG away. Unai Emery has overseen a marked improvement in their away displays — they’re on 1.36 PPG so far while also maintaining that strong home form.

Going back further, from 2012-2018 only 10 teams in the top four leagues earned 80 percent or more of their points at home. Six of those sides were relegated, with four finishing bottom of the table.

By far the worst home form in this timeframe was from German minnows Greuther Fuerth in the 2012-13 campaign, their first and so far only season in the Bundesliga. They managed a paltry 21 points in total, with just four of them coming at home, as Fuerth failed to win a single league match at their Sportpark Ronhof stadium.

A dead end

Cardiff’s 0-0 draw with Huddersfield on Saturday was notable for two reasons. Firstly, it proved to be the final game in charge for Huddersfield’s likable German coach David Wagner. Secondly, in xG terms it was the most uneventful match in Europe’s top four leagues this season.

Cardiff created a lamentable 0.12 xG, while Huddersfield were only slightly better with 0.39 xG. There were just two shots on target, both by Huddersfield, and the only real talking point related to something that didn’t happen, namely the officials’ bewildering failure to award Huddersfield a penalty kick late in the game.

The average total xG for games this season is 2.73, almost identical to the average number of actual goals scored: 2.70.

Another clash between two Premier League relegation candidates, Newcastle’s goalless draw with Fulham just before Christmas, was the second drabbest game in terms of goalmouth action. With that in mind, neutrals might want to give Saturday’s bottom-of-the-table clash between Newcastle and Cardiff a very wide berth.