Week 39: Heads Down (and other reasons why we’re seeing so many goals in the Premier League)

On Monday night, West Bromwich and Burnley played out what sounded like a pretty unspectacular goalless draw at a deserted Hawthorns (one of those where the fans were probably happy to be kept away and definitely one to get people’s goat about paying nearly fifteen quid to watch on TV).

However, the game did have some fairly spectacular stats around it; well, two actually and that was it being the first 0-0 draw of this current Premier League season and also the longest wait for a no-goal draw in Premier League history.

I don’t know how far they’ve gone back before 1992/93 – remember, for some football only started then – but it’s hard to imagine many seasons having to wait until it’s 47th game until both sides fired blanks in a match.

Until then, not only had every game had a goal, but some had lots of them. Some more stats, just to give this additional context.

  • In those 46 games before Monday, 171 goals had been scored in the Premier League. In the first 46 games of the 2019/20 season, there were 132 goals.
  • The average goals per game before Monday was 3.72, compared to 2.72 (that being the average for the whole of last season).
  • It’s not just the Premier League. The first round of Champions League matches produced 49 goals, with 45 scored in the same round of the previous two seasons. Interestingly, the trend wasn’t followed in the EFL with only just over 2 goals per game on average in the first 72 games.

So why so many more goals at the top of the elite level? Fittingly, as one of the most prolific goal-scorers of all time – the great Pele (imagine the fun he’d have had this season if he could still get up for it) – turned 80 this week, I’ve dedicated this week’s column to getting to the bottom of it, or attempting to at least.

What’s more incredible about this phenomenon is that it’s happening despite VAR sucking all the fun and perfectly good goals out of football. We’d have had at least another fifteen Premier League goals if that abomination wasn’t blighting our game.

So, given that technology, and the new interpretation of the handball and offside rule are chalking seemingly good goals off, and yet we’re still getting more, there has to be a proper reason for these amazing numbers. Here are some possible answers:

Defending

Let’s face it, defences have been pretty dire this season.

Even with VVD (who sounds more like an STD than world-class defender when shortened like that) in their back four, Liverpool shipped seven at Villa Park and have conceded 13 goals so far in five games. For even more context, it took 14 games last season for them to concede the same number. After a clean sheet at Ajax this week, maybe they’ll cope better than they thought without their record signing who’s length of absence hasn’t been confirmed yet – doctors probably have little prior experience to fall back on when it comes to surgically removing a patient from between Jordan Pickford’s legs.

We’ve already seen Manchester United – the one that can somehow win at PSG – concede 9 in consecutive home games. Manchester City let in five at home in one match – the first time that’s ever happened to Pep with any team of his – and Spurs conceded three at home in the last 8 minutes at the weekend.

Have teams simply forgotten how to defend? Perennial misers, Atletico Madrid, let in four at Bayern this week. And some of the top leagues of Europe have seen it too. For instance, there were 36 goals in the opening 9 matches in the Bundesliga (that’s 4 per game; even higher than the Premier League).

At the weekend, the results of the 5 Serie A games were 3-4, 2-2, 2-3, 3-2 and 5-2 (average 5.6 goals per game!). There was a time when there would have been at least two 0-0 draws and the rest would finish 1-0.

Is it fair to blame it all on the poor defenders? Goalkeepers too have come in for criticism although, in his defence, of those 171 goals, Kepa of Chelsea only made a mistake for 104 of them.

There was once an idea – by a FIFA think-tank, possibly – that bigger goals might make football more exciting. At the current rate, bigger goals would make football more…rugby. 14-9 anyone?

Attacking

It does feel like more emphasis is being put on forward play this season. Spurs, even after Kane and Son ran riot at Southampton and after they then scored 7 in the Europa League, still added Gareth Bale to their ranks. Has the success of Liverpool’s attacking trio made other teams sit up and take notice, perhaps?

In the transfer window, Ben Chilwell’s £45m move and Ruben Dias’s £65m switch to Manchester City aside, most of the big money deals or eye-catching loan deals were for strikers, wingers or attacking midfielders. Liverpool, with arguably the best front three in football already, splashed out £41m on a back-up striker. Chelsea spent over £150m on forwards but their answer to replacing their calamity-Kepa was a £20m signing from Rennes and giving Petr Cech another contract.

Or have the strikers themselves stepped up? Everton’s Dominic Calvert-Lewin looks like the next Robert Lewandowski, scoring hat-tricks (one the fastest in PL history) in consecutive games at Goodison and equalling a record set by Dixie Dean, putting him into double figures for the season already. His form earned him an England call up and his first goal in the win against Wales. Everton have scored 26 goals in all competitions (8 matches) as a team. They scored just 44 in 38 Premier League matches in 2019/20 and Calvert-Lewin ‘only’ 15 in the whole campaign.

Something is clearly going on.

Coronavirus

It’s t blame for almost everything else, why not this? Directly or indirectly, it’s definitely not fault-free for the chaos it’s caused; not least to the footballing calendar.

Last season was paused then went on until August. The Euro 2020-free summer break was unusually short and it’s led to concerns about fitness levels and injuries. With international breaks already punctuating the schedule further, the top players (bless them) mustn’t know if they are coming or going right now. Does that favour attackers though, where instinct is a huge part of their repertoire? Defenders and goalkeepers meanwhile are more reliant on stability, drills and positional awareness; harder to instil when there isn’t a proper pre-season to bed ideas and signings in. Indeed, Jose Mourinho said that prior to the first game of the season (when a certain D. Calvert-Lewin of Everton scored the only goal) some of his players hadn’t trained together at all. So, maybe a Kevin Keegan inspired ‘we’ll score one more than the opposition’ ethos is in play.

Empty Stadiums

For me, the main reason. When we watch matches via Sky, TV or on Match of the Day, we have the artificial crowd claptrap that tricks our minds into thinking it’s not so different to the real thing (except when Crystal Palace were awarded a penalty against Brighton and the only sound was loud booing). The reality is very different; stadiums are vast, empty bowls where matches aren’t much more than a glorified training session. All that can be heard is players shouting and swearing and although the pretend noise might mask that, it can’t disguise players chucking in the towel.

The problems come when a score-line begins to run away from a team. A side, without the encouragement of their fans or not needing to hold onto their pride quite so much, can fall apart quite easily without supporters roaring them on. West Ham’s late comeback at Spurs was quite unusual – most of the time, the winning team has run away with it by the end, with the best example being Villa’s win against Liverpool when, after the seventh goal, Villa could easily have scored another three or four.

In midweek, Real Madrid played their first Champions League match of the season against Shakhtar Donetsk at the club’s 6,000 capacity training ground, while renovations at the Santiago Bernabeu continue. Despite the Ukrainians losing 13 first team squad players to Covid-19 they raced into a big lead and eventually upset the Spanish giants, winning 3-2. Would that have happened if their under-23 filled XI were playing in front of 90,000 home fans in the Bernabeu?

Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll never know but I doubt it.

Conclusion

The weirdest thing about this Premier League season so far (apart from Leicester City only playing teams in claret and blue so far at home), is that it seems to be an outlier in English football that hasn’t translated to the EFL.

That suggests an anomaly or blip that might rectify itself eventually – stand by for a really boring couple of months if it does – but that still doesn’t explain why it’s happening.

For now, it’s impossible to pin it all on one reason. I’d say it’s more likely a combination of them all with a ratio that’s something in these regions:

Better attacking play – 20%

Poorer defensive play – 15%

Coronavirus – 25%

Empty stadiums – 30%

The mathematicians amongst you will notice that only adds up to 90%. The other 10% will be things not even considered in this article, but will no doubt have caused you to begin shouting them out at your phone or laptop with incredulity.

Such as tactics, the ball, Manchester United’s third kit, Gareth Southgate. Maybe Mesut Ozil.

Still, it’ll be fun while it lasts and by the time it’s over, and dull games with just 2.72 goals are the norm again, you can bet that there has been some newly invented rule or technology – or another England goalkeeper – that we can rip to shreds instead.

Concussion-based substitutions are the latest IFAB plaything, apparently. And they think they can introduce them mid-season although when changes to the offside law were asked for, they said they couldn’t do that as it would affect the ‘competitive balance’.

They wouldn’t be new though. Only to football. Rugby union and rugby league apparently use them every game with no problems at all.

So, I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist