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By Tony Attwood
According to the Athletic in 2022/23 the goals per game in the Premier League were 2.85. This season it is 3.23. Both are considerably above the nadir of 2.36 in 1970/71.
So what has happened? Has football really got a lot more exciting than it used to be?
This season the top three scoring clubs (Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City) have scored 184 and the bottom three scorers (Everton Burnley and Sheffield United have scored 75
Last season at this point the top three scorers (the same three as this season) had scored 172. The bottom three scorers (Everton, Southampton, Wolverhampton) had scored 58.
So yes the top three and the bottom three are both scoring more goals which sounds like a lot more excitement.
Meanwhile, as the Athletiic tells us the Premier League is ranked as the best league in Europe based on UEFA’s coefficients, which take into account teams’ performance in European competitions over five seasons.
Which makes it sound that everything is perfect. Except in the last five seasons the same club (Manchester City) has won the league four times and come second once.
Now that has happened before. From 2006/7 to 2012/13 Manchester United won the league five times and came second twice. Indeed in the first eleven seasons of the Premier League from 1992/3 on to 2002/3 Manchester United won the league eight times.
Setting those numbers out makes it clear that the dominance of the League by a single club is the norm for the Premier League. In fact, since the League began in 1992, there have been seven different winners: Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, Blackburn Rovers, Leicester City and Liverpool.
However two of those clubs have only won the league once, so excluding them we have five clubs that have won the league more than once across its 31 years existence. All of which makes the league seem a little less competitive than it might be.
To get a snapshot of how the league has changed from one in which there was far less certainty about who would win, or who the top two or three would be, to the present day, consider this:
Eight teams have finished as runners-up in English football’s top division without ever finishing top : Bristol City (1906–07), Oldham Athletic (1914–15), Cardiff City (1923–24), Charlton Athletic (1936–37), Blackpool (1955–56), Queens Park Rangers (1975–76), Watford (1982–83) and Southampton (1983–84).
It is the fact that the last of those was 40 years ago gives us a snapshot of what has happened. We don’t get serious challengers from outside the elite anymore. Indeed the clubs that come up from the championship have one main ambition: to stay in the premier league for more than just one season.
It is of course true that only once in Premier League history have all three promoted teams gone straight back down again. That was in 1997-98 when Barnsley, Bolton and Crystal Palace were relegated.
But at the start of last season the BBC calculated that 40 clubs have had just one season in the Premier League and that was it. 14 clubs have had two seasons and only 12 promoted clubs have managed to have ten or more seasons in the top league.after being promoted.
Indeed we are now at the point where we expect at least two of the promoted clubs from one season to go down next time around.
What has happened in the Premier League is of course not too different from what happens in other leagues. Paris St Germain has won the league in France nine times in the past 11 seasons. Bayern Munich has won the German league 11 seasons in a row.
Spain has done it all slightly differently, although since 2004/5 only three teams have won the top division, and of those one (Atletico Madrid) has only won it twice. You don’t need too much European football knowledge to know who the other two are.
Back in 2008/9 and 2009/10 it did look as if the Netherlands might be breaking this trend as AZ and Twente won consecutive seasons, AZ for the second time in their history and Twente for the first time. But then it was back to the old ways with seven wins to Ajax, two to Feyenoord and two to PSV.
Of course we all want our own team to win, year after. Of course I would love to see a return to the early Wenger years when Arsenal won the league three times and came second four times in seven consecutive seasons.
But if I stand back for a moment and think of a broader picture, there is something to be said for earlier times – as when for example in the first decade of football after its return following the second world war, there were seven different champions. And yes I know one of them was Tottenham, but I’d even put up with that if it meant a little more variety than six Manchester City titles in the last seven years.
Great read, detailed as always.
I enjoyed it.