{"id":857609,"date":"2026-09-23T09:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T09:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/857609\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T09:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T09:28:09","slug":"how-premier-league-teams-have-really-started-according-to-expected-goals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/857609\/","title":{"rendered":"How Premier League teams have really started &#8211; according to expected goals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">How have Premier League teams really started?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At this stage last season <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/liverpool\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Liverpool<\/a> were top, with five wins out of five, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/teams\/tottenham-hotspur\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tottenham<\/a> were third. Given that they finished fifth and 17th respectively, it shows that the table shouldn&#8217;t be taken too seriously this early on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">While any statistics should be taken with a pinch of salt &#8211; given such a small sample size of games and the fact that some teams have had more difficult starts than others &#8211; they do provide a more accurate picture of how the season could unfold.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Expected goals (xG) tells us how much teams have dominated games, based on the number and quality of shots they&#8217;ve taken and faced. Basically, how well they&#8217;ve performed in general before finishing, shot-stopping and plain old luck come into play.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And Premier League history shows us that the more a team dominates games, the more points they win in the long run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How have Premier League teams really started? At this stage last season Liverpool were top, with five wins&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":857610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-857609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}