What Liverpool and Chelsea’s Underlying Numbers Always Leads To

Seven years of deep data. The computer says ...

In continually trying to work out exactly what each team’s underlying numbers tends to lead to, I’ve gone back and looked at all seven seasons of full xG data for the Premier League; so 140 teams of Opta/FBRef numbers, along with league position, actual goals, actual points, etc, as well as xG data.

There are some deep patterns here.

By game 15, most really successful teams have a set of consistent underlying numbers that do not shift too far from that set-point.

Liverpool’s 2024/25 data matches and betters some champions at this stage; Chelsea’s (prior to the Brentford games) falls a fair bit short, and below the point from which champions are made.

Which doesn’t mean Chelsea can’t close the important underlying numbers gap. But I’ll show how difficult it’s proven for teams in the recent past.

What’s fascinating is that, with 10 men for over 80 minutes (with nine added minutes, albeit instead of 10), Liverpool dominated all aspects of the play, including the xG.

It fit right with the season’s pattern of domination; Fulham grabbing two lucky, deflected goals, and the Reds the far better team, and denied a stonewall penalty and opposition red cards.

But again, the data, as I will show, retains the hallmark of champions.

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