| Premier League 2025-26 contexG Ratings | ||
| 01 Mar, 2026 | ||
| Team | Matches | contexGD |
|---|---|---|
| Arsenal | 29 | 1.10 |
| Manchester City | 28 | 0.94 |
| Chelsea | 28 | 0.62 |
| Liverpool | 28 | 0.57 |
| Manchester United | 28 | 0.39 |
| Brentford | 28 | 0.20 |
| Newcastle United | 28 | 0.15 |
| Crystal Palace | 28 | 0.03 |
| Aston Villa | 28 | 0.03 |
| Brighton | 28 | 0.00 |
| Bournemouth | 28 | −0.01 |
| Fulham | 28 | −0.02 |
| Leeds | 28 | −0.15 |
| Everton | 28 | −0.30 |
| Tottenham | 28 | −0.31 |
| Nottingham Forest | 28 | −0.36 |
| Sunderland | 28 | −0.55 |
| West Ham | 28 | −0.58 |
| Wolves | 29 | −0.75 |
| Burnley | 28 | −1.01 |
Premier League Weekend Review
football
statistics
Arsenal clear another hurdle, United go third, and Spurs continue to spiral.
Arsenal clear another hurdle, United go third, and Spurs continue to spiral.
For an overview of my contexG model, please refer to my intro article.
I posted a note last week showing Aston Villa’s absurd record in one-goal games over the last two seasons. They managed to preserve that record here by conceding a late second after Amadou Onana had missed a great chance to equalise (0.41 xG on Understat) in injury time.
It wasn’t the worst performance in the world from Villa: 61% possession, 24 touches in the box to Wolves’ 12, 14 shots to 9. This is the sort of tight game where Unai Emery seemingly always squeaks out a narrow win, but not this time.
Injuries to McGinn, Kamara and Tielemans have weakened the midfield but it’s not like they were always dominating games with them in the team. All season long, the numbers have painted Villa as a mid-table side who were somehow challenging for the title (current season-long contexGD: +0.03). It’s feeling eerily similar to Nottingham Forest last year where Champions League football seemed to be in the bag, but the season was just a little bit too long for them.
Next up for Villa are two huge games against Chelsea and Manchester United which will probably go a long way to deciding whether they can finish in the top 5. The good news is they have two bites of the cherry as they are favourites to win the Europa League, a competition Emery has already won four times!
This game had a bit of a dead rubber feel to it, although I suppose Bournemouth will feel they still have an outside chance of Europe. They were the better side in this one, dominating territory and outshooting Sunderland 21-8.
Sunderland’s opener was a good example of why contexG applies shrinkage to xG values. It’s down as 0.68 on Understat and 0.9 on Fotmob, because the keeper parried a shot into the centre of the goal for an easy tap-in. But it doesn’t feel like that should carry much more signal than if the shot had just gone straight in in the first place.
Credit to Sunderland for staying up unexpectedly this season, but they continue to look like a team that will be among the favourites to go down next season (current season-long contexGD: -0.55).
A wild game in which Brentford led 3-0 then got pegged back to 3-3, scored an injury-time winner, and then saw Ashley Barnes have a last-gasp equaliser disallowed for handball. I don’t know what angle the VAR was looking at but it didn’t seem conclusive to me. Gun to my head, it probably hit his arm, but this raises the usual questions over the “clear and obvious” threshold.
Sympathy is tempered by the fact Brentford were comfortably the better team in this game, managing 44 touches in the box to Burnley’s 13 despite leading for half the match. It would be a remarkable turn of events if they can qualify for Europe after Thomas Frank’s departure. There’s not too much to say about Burnley who continue to look like the worst team in the league (-1.01 contexGD).
A strange game at Anfield where West Ham played fairly well on the eye test but got thumped. contexG rates this as a decent performance from Liverpool - when all is said and done, they did have more shots, more deep completions, led from the 5th minute, and scored five goals - albeit from three deflections and two set pieces.
There is no doubt, however, that West Ham’s form has improved dramatically in the new year. The defeat at Man City in December was the 14th consecutive game in which they had lower contexG than the opposition. In the games since then, they had actually been averaging a positive contexG, although this result takes them slightly below zero.
Nonetheless, with a healthy squad and Crysencio Summerville clearly one of the in-form players of the division, West Ham have given themselves a decent shot at staying up, having looked dead & buried at one stage. The fact this improvement has come despite the sale of Lucas Paqueta probably does not reflect well on the Brazilian’s influence.
A close game at St. James’ Park which Everton shaded. Disappointing from Newcastle in a fixture they would expect to win.
The xG on Understat was 1.12-2.41 in Everton’s favour but this includes two virtual open goals, one of which came from Nick Pope spilling a tame shot. Newcastle dominated territory (32 box touches to Everton’s 11) but didn’t create much given they trailed at home for most of the game.
It is becoming increasingly apparent how crucial Bruno Guimaraes is for Newcastle. He has now missed five Premier League games this season; not the easiest set of fixtures, but they have only gained one point from these five games and performed poorly overall. Here are the scores of those games, with contexGD in parentheses:
Bournemouth away 0-0 (-0.24)
Aston Villa home 0-2 (-0.36)
Liverpool away 1-4 (-1.93)
Man City away 1-2 (-1.68)
Everton home 2-3 (+0.13)
contexG doesn’t mind Newcastle overall (+0.15 for the season) but last summer’s transfer window is looking like one of the all-time disasters as they spent north of £200m on Nick Woltemade, Anthony Elanga, Yoane Wissa and Jacob Ramsey - none of whom are even nailed-on starters at the moment, let alone key players.
Taking over a struggling club with new wealthy ownership is the dream job for managers. The fans are slow to set their new expectation level and will generally give the manager a longer leash than normal. But Newcastle have some tough cup ties coming up against Barcelona and Man City; exits in both of those competitions would leave them with a bit of a lost season, and pressure on Eddie Howe may begin to ramp up.
With Erling Haaland absent for the first time in the Premier League this season, City rode their luck a bit in the first half, going ahead against the run of play through Antoine Semenyo’s 6th goal since joining in January. City had 76% possession before the break but had looked vulnerable against a classic counterattacking performance from Leeds.
It was an impressive defensive performance in the second half as City restricted Leeds to very little (0.22 xG), their best chance being a Bijol header from a corner, and in the end it was a deserved but not a vintage win. This isn’t peak Man City, but it’s still almost-the-best-team-in-the-league Man City, and it might still be enough to win the title and/or the Champions League.
There was some optimism about Nottingham Forest after an emphatic first-leg win at Fenerbahce and a decent performance at home to Liverpool in new manager Vitor Pereira’s first two games. But that has eroded a bit after a disappointing second leg defeat followed by today’s poor effort at Brighton where they were well beaten.
Both sides exchanged early long-range goals with some questionable goalkeeping, before Danny Welbeck scored what turned out to be the winner in the 15th minute. Despite needing an equaliser for the remainder of the game, Forest only managed 17 touches in the box and a total of 13 shots valued at 0.97 xG on Fotmob and 0.83 on Understat.
Forest have multiple players that have been linked with big-money moves to top sides, which is perhaps why there is an expectation they will get their act together, but they continue to serve up poor performances (season-long contexGD: -0.36)
They are also still in the Europa League, for which they are currently rated around 8-9% to win, meaning there is still a nontrivial chance of a Championship team playing in next season’s Champions League.
Despite the change of manager, it doesn’t get any better from Spurs. In fact it might be getting even worse.
Spurs can feel aggrieved that Fulham’s opening goal was allowed to stand after a very similar offence by Randal Kolo Muani resulted in a disallowed goal for them last week. And of course, when things are going against you, things like Alex Iwobi scoring a worldy in off the post just tend to happen.
But make no mistake, this was an absolute garbage performance as Spurs failed to create many chances despite chasing the game from the 6th minute, and were regularly shredded apart at the back in what felt like a fairly routine home win for Fulham.
When Richarlison pulled one back in the 66th minute it felt like there would be sustained pressure as Spurs looked for an equaliser; in fact they only managed a further three shots for 0.2 xG.
Injuries are obviously a big part of the problem, turning what would probably be merely a bad mid-table team into one that increasingly looks like they are relying on West Ham or Forest having an equally poor run-in to avoid an unthinkable first relegation since the 1970s.
It’s Palace at home next, for which the bookies have Spurs as favourites, but that feels pretty hard to justify given recent performances and their appalling home form (P14 W2 D4 L8).
This game clearly hinged on the penalty & red card for Maxence Lacroix for a little tug back on Matheus Cunha. Prior to that, Palace had looked fairly comfortable after going ahead through Lacroix’s weird long-range header from a corner.
Although the double jeopardy rule tells referees not to award both a penalty and red card for the same offence, this only applies to genuine attempts to play the ball, and so Lacroix was given his marching orders. This just seems overly harsh to me.
If Cunha is through on goal then it’s a decent chance to score. This is why the penalty kick exists: you get around 0.8 xG, better than all but the clearest chances. Giving United 0.8 xG AND sending off Lacroix moves them from a situation where they are 1-0 down to instantly being strong favourites to win the match. I just can’t think of another sport where such a decisive punishment is issued midway through a match.
It was a nice header by Benjamin Sesko and United do get credit for finishing off the win; earlier this season, of course, they failed to score against Everton who had 10 men for almost the whole game. But it seems to be continuing the pattern of nice breaks they have benefitted from since appointing Michael Carrick - eerily similar to the run during Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s caretaker stint.
A typical Arsenal win where they showed off their prowess from corners by not only scoring twice at the correct end, but adding an own goal from a Chelsea corner as well.
Watching some of the wrestling at set pieces among what Michael Caley has fantastically christened the meat wall, I can’t help but think people will look back at these clips in future years in astonishment that this was once allowed - much like we now look back at some of the brutal tackles from the 1970s.
It wasn’t a vintage Arsenal performance, and it wasn’t a great game to be honest (0.89 total xG from open play). As usual, Arsenal’s excellent defence was adept at keeping the opposition out of the box, as Chelsea only managed 14 touches in the box. The game was essentially decided in a 5-minute period midway through the second half, when Timber’s headed winner was followed shortly after by Neto getting a second yellow card, Chelsea’s ninth sending off of the season in all competitions.
Coming up we have a full programme of midweek fixtures including Brighton v Arsenal, Man City v Forest, Aston Villa v Chelsea, Fulham v West Ham and Spurs v Palace so there should be some drama at the top and bottom of the table. I’ll be back with my review later in the week.