Corners, penalties, hat-tricks, own goals and gaffes: one weird stat for every Premier League team

Dave Tickner
Tottenham striker Harry Kane celebrates scoring a goal

The discovery that Leicester hadn’t scored an equaliser or winning goal in the second half of a Premier League game this season throw us entirely off kilter. It’s a very silly stat. And it inevitably set us down the road to finding one for the other 19 Premier League clubs.

We can’t promise they’re all as good as that one. Some are okay, though. Don’t just give up. Please read them. Please.

 

ARSENAL have the Premier League’s most error-prone defence
They may be five points clear at the top of the Premier League having won 21 of their 27 games thus far, but Arsenal are in their own way the most generous team in the division, having committed 16 errors leading directly to an opponent having a shot on goal (according to the excellent number wranglers at FBref.com).

No other team has more than 13 such errors, while all three of the worst individual offenders can be found in north London. Spurs and Arsenal goalkeepers Hugo Lloris and Aaron Ramsdale have made four errors apiece leading directly to an opponent’s shot, a number matched by only one outfield player across the entire division, and it’s a surprising one. Clue: he is the proud owner of the season’s catchiest chant.

 

ASTON VILLA ‘lead’ the way for own goals
Four of the 39 Premier League goals Aston Vila have conceded this season have been own goals, most memorably Emi Martinez’s potentially season-defining one against Arsenal. Leicester and Southampton also have four own goals on their record this season, but they’ve conceded more goals altogether so clearly that makes Villa’s record in this regard better. Or worse.

Look, Villa are a resolutely mid-table team in a league that has precious few of those this season. They don’t have very interesting stats. The only other thing we could find is that they’ve weirdly drawn the second most fouls of anyone this season. Palace are first, which makes sense because Zaha. But Villa have no player inside the top 10 most fouled players, and the Villa player who’s been fouled the most is Ezri Konsa which only makes matters more confusing, so we left it.

 

BOURNEMOUTH are now the only Premier League team not to be awarded a penalty this season
Saturday’s clash between Bournemouth and Liverpool featured the only two teams in the Premier League who hadn’t had a penalty. Liverpool duly got one, Mo Salah duly missed it, meaning Liverpool remain alongside Bournemouth on zero penalty goals this season. That list also includes Southampton and Crystal Palace, who both have 0/2 records from the spot this season thanks to frankly unlikely failings of Wilfried Zaha and especially James Ward-Prowse.

BRENTFORD have neither won from behind nor lost from ahead in the Premier League this season
Only three Premier League teams are yet to win a game this season after falling behind. Only three Premier League teams are yet to lose a game this season after taking the lead. Snugly in the centre of this particular Venn Diagram sit sensible Brentford, who have six draws and five defeats from the 11 games in which they’ve trailed and nine wins and three draws from the 12 games they’ve led.

 

BRIGHTON play genuinely elite football
Wishy-washy, this, and sounds more condescending than it’s meant to. But bear with. When a team from outside the established elite bother the big boys, they are usually a statistical anomaly, prevailing through exemplary execution of a stripped-back yet relentlessly effective style. Brighton aren’t like that. They’re just really good in precisely the same ways all the other good teams are good. They rank fifth for total passes (above Tottenham), fourth for progressive passes (above Chelsea, Tottenham, Newcastle and Manchester United), fourth for possession (above Chelsea, Manchester United, Newcastle and Tottenham), sixth for shot and goal-creating actions, fifth for non-penalty xG, and fifth for actual goals.

 

CHELSEA have been caught offside more than any other Premier League team this season
A total of 59 offsides in total for the mid-table Blues, which is a good effort for a team that doesn’t even play with a striker most of the time. The player who generally does the best approximation of striker for Chelsea is Kai Havertz, and sure enough one of the bits he’s great at is being caught offside: the German has fallen foul of the flag a division-leading 25 times this season.

A special shout here for Spurs’ Richarlison, who has been offside only four times all season but on two of those occasions seen goals ruled out. He still awaits his first actual Premier League goal for Spurs.

 

CRYSTAL PALACE lose surprisingly rarely for a team that never wins
Crystal Palace haven’t won a single football match in 2023, which is bad. In the Premier League, their current run without a win extends to 10 games – matching Leeds’ November-February strife as the division’s worst winless streak this season – but they have yet to lose more than twice in a row at any stage. That’s a record only Arsenal, Manchester City and Brentford can better.

 

EVERTON have blocked 120 shots this season, and one player is responsible for almost half of them
Bournemouth (126) have actually blocked a few more shots than Everton all told but Everton’s second place is almost entirely down to one man, and that one man is James Tarkowski. He’s blocked an absurd 59 shots this season – which is more than Liverpool (54) or Arsenal (55) and twice as many as any other individual player. Max Kilman and Ben Mee have 29 blocks, nobody else has more than 24 and only 10 players all told have managed even 20.

 

FULHAM striker Aleksandar Mitrovic is still sixth on the Premier League scoring charts despite not scoring since the first week of January
His only goal this year came against Leicester on January 3. Arsenal’s Gabriel Martinelli was the latest player to sneak past him at the weekend. Mo Salah missed his chance to do likewise, Miguel Almiron moved level.

 

LEEDS players have attempted (and unsurprisingly therefore completed) way more tackles than anyone else
It’s 578 to be exact. Chelsea (502) are the only other team above 500. Leeds players have been successful with 343 of those tackles. Chelsea (303) are the only other team above 300.

Tyler Adams and Pascal Struijk rank second and third in the division for both tackles attempted (88 and 63) and completed (46 and 44). The only other player with more than 40 completed tackles is Fulham all-round powerhouse Joao Palhinha with 58 successful tackles from 101 attempts.

 

LEICESTER haven’t scored an equaliser or winning goal in the second half of a Premier League game this season
We’ve checked and double-checked this because it’s too mental for words, but it’s true. They have twice taken the lead in the 45th minute in games they’ve gone on to win – at Everton in November and more recently in a daft game at Villa where they twice came from behind in the first half before getting their noses in front just before the break. Their latest equalising goals in any game (win, lose or draw) came in the 41st minute: in the above Villa nonsense, and also when James Maddison made it 2-2 at White Hart Lane in September before Spurs scored four unanswered goals in the second half.

 

LIVERPOOL have scored 34% of their Premier League goals this season in two games
Having plundered nine against Bournemouth early in the season (incidentally making the Cherries’ 1-0 win in the reverse fixture last weekend the best ‘measure of revenge’ in Premier League history) and seven against Manchester United rather more recently. Nobody else can reach 30% on this particular and pointedly arbitrary metric, with West Ham the next ‘best’ at 29% thanks to scoring four against Forest, three against Fulham and only 24 altogether.

MANCHESTER CITY have used fewer players in the Premier League this season than anyone else
It may be a squad game for the European teams these days and City may have more money than God, but only 22 players have appeared in a Premier League game for the title chasers this season, two fewer than Crystal Palace and 11 fewer than the unsurprising ‘leaders’ in this particular category, transfer dafties Nottingham Forest.

 

MANCHESTER UNITED are the only team to concede six or more goals twice in the Premier League this season
They did it at Manchester City, and, as you may have heard, also at Liverpool. Both City and Liverpool have also scored six or more twice having also done so against Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth respectively. Spurs are the only other team to score six in a single game this season, against Leicester in September.

 

NEWCASTLE’s win over Wolves on Sunday was their first after conceding an equaliser since April 2021
And that’s in any competition. Not since West Ham pegged them back from 2-0 down to 2-2 at St James’ Park on April 17 2021 only for Joe Willock to pop up with a late winner had Newcastle managed to do what they did to Wolves to get their flagging European hopes back on track.

Alas, their win did hurt their chances of matching or bettering an all-time Premier League record: Newcastle (and also Brentford) now need seven draws in their remaining 13 games to match the 18 managed in 42-game seasons by Manchester City and Sheffield United in 93/94 and Southampton the following year. Newcastle already jointly hold the 38-game record of 17, which they managed in 2003/04.

 

NOTTINGHAM FOREST have won fewer corners in 2022/23 than any other Premier League team
And it’s not remotely close. Manchester City, unsurprisingly, have the most corners with 171. Then come Newcastle, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham all with more than 150. The second lowest total is Bournemouth’s 90 corners. Then trailing in last come Forest with 76, barely two per game.

While it’s not quite as straightforward as ‘better teams = more corners’ it’s certainly the general trend, which makes Manchester United’s 14th place with a mere 107 corners an interesting oddity here.

 

SOUTHAMPTON have secured precisely half their 22 Premier League points this season from losing positions and 27% of their Premier League points this season against Chelsea.
Southampton have 11 points from losing positions this season, including three in a 2-1 home win over Chelsea who they also beat 1-0 at Stamford Bridge. That’s more points against Chelsea than they’ve managed so far against Wolves, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Crystal Palace, West Ham, Leeds and Bournemouth combined.

 

TOTTENHAM record goalscorer Harry Kane scored six Premier League hat-tricks in 2017 and hasn’t managed a single one since.
Heung-min Son has three Premier League hat-tricks since Kane last got one. Gareth Bale managed one in his season back in London on loan. Even Lucas Moura has a Premier League treble for Spurs more recently than Kane. Other players with a more recent Premier League hat-trick than Kane include: Leandro Trossard, Jack Harrison, Mason Mount, Chris Wood, Christian Pulisic, Ayoze Perez (twice), Bernardo Silva, Tammy Abraham, Teemu Pukki, Gerard Deulofeu and Aaron Ramsey.

Kane scored twice against Forest on Saturday – his 19th Premier League brace since his last hat-trick. In all he’s scored 107 Premier League goals in 174 games since that treble against Southampton on Boxing Day 2017.

 

WEST HAM haven’t had a goalless draw in their last 71 games in all competitions
You have to go back to a Premier League game against Burnley on December 12 2021 for the last West Ham game not to feature a single goal. Moyesball, that. Seventy-one games since December 12 2021 also a jolting reminder of just what a daft amount of football West Ham, with their Europa League and Europa Conference exploits, have played in the last 15 months.

 

WOLVES’ 3-0 win over Liverpool last month is the one and only time they’ve scored three or more goals in their last 43 games.
The last time it happened before that was a 4-0 win over Watford in March last year.

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