| Positional Statistics: 2023/24 Performance Metrics | ||||||
| Aggregated KPI averages and medians by player position | ||||||
| Position | Count | Avg Goals | Median Goals | Avg xG | Avg Prg. Passes | Avg Prg. Carries |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forward | 217 | 3.96 | 2 | 3.91 | 39.39 | 36.24 |
| Midfielder | 153 | 1.20 | 0 | 1.32 | 67.50 | 19.96 |
| Defender | 170 | 0.90 | 1 | 0.91 | 61.24 | 19.86 |
| Goalkeeper | 40 | 0.00 | 0 | 0.00 | 1.30 | 0.05 |
Assessment of Premier League Player Performance for Finishing Efficiency, Youth Impact and Team Discipline Trends (2023–24)
Introduction
The English Premier League (EPL) is the top level of the professional football pyramid in the English professional football system, consisting of 20 elite teams in England competing at the highest domestic standard. The Premier League is the most-watched league on the planet, attracting attention globally across 189 countries and reaching over 190 million viewers. In turn, the Premier League continues to attract the utmost elite players to compete throughout the season.
This report will seek to analyse the individual player and overall team performances across the 2023/24 season, focusing on evaluating key performance indicators that highlight efficient finishers, the most impactful youth players, and overall collective team efficiency regarding finishing and team discipline. Finishing efficiency is evaluated through the relationship between Goals and Expected Goals (xG), a probabilistic model estimating shot quality. Additional attacking characteristics, such as progressive passes and carries are used to contextualise positive contribution beyond goal scoring. The report reviews squad statistics and league demographics before analysing finishing efficiency at the individual and team levels. To understand the contributors and behavioural patterns among teams, youth performance and disciplinary trends were further evaluated.
League Player Characteristics
Positional Standards
The Premier League attracts the highest level of footballing talent from across the globe. The distribution is spread across the league, which leads to a competitive league to pursue season upon season. The table above illustrates the distribution of 580 players across various positions within the league. Forward players dominate in volume with 217 total players, followed by defenders with 170 and midfielders with 153. Each team registered 2 goalkeepers, bringing a total of 40 goalkeepers within the league.
As expected, forwards produced the highest average goals per player of just below 4 goals per player. The build-up to these goals can be shown through the impact of midfielders, who average the highest average progressive passes of 67.50 (a successful pass that breaks defensive lines to generate attacking momentum and moves the ball towards the opponent’s goal).
Global Diversity
Additionally to positionally, the Premier League attracts players from all backgrounds and footballing philosophy backgrounds, with the Top 10 Nationalities in terms of total number of players shown on the bar chart above. English players dominate the league with 199 players, which is to be expected as the home nation of the league. Additionally, the Premier League mandates that teams’ 25-man squads have a minimum of eight “homegrown” players and a maximum of 17 non-homegrown players, which ensures each team presents a minimum number of English or Welsh players. Regardless of nationality, a player is deemed homegrown if they were registered with any club connected to the FA or Welsh FA for a minimum of three seasons (or 36 months) before turning 21.
Although Brazilians were highly represented in the Premier League with 33 players, closely followed by the French with 28 players. Ireland continued to be highly represented in the league with 17 representatives. The league is highly diverse and has been able to attract multiple players from various cultures from all across the world.
Age Profiles
Additionally to the global reach the Premier League possesses, there is a large age distribution of players across the league, as shown on the box plot above.
Forward players consisted of the highest number of players yet still contained the youngest players within the league, with all players ranging from low to mid-twenties. Midfielders possessed the greatest spread of ages, with a median age of 25 years old. Defenders similarly had a spread between the ages of low to late twenties. Goalkeepers possessed the eldest of players, with an age spread between mid to late twenties, and an outlier of 38-year-old Lukasz Fabianski.
During the Premier League 2023/24 season, the youth tend to dominate forward positions, with players falling backwards from midfielders, to defenders, and goalkeepers consisting of the eldest players in the league.
Forward Efficiency
Now that the base of the league has been highlighted, these individual players and overall teams can be analysed to understand the positive effect team players had on scoring within the league.
This report reflects scoring efficiency through goals (G) and expected goals (xG). The difference between these two figures shows the efficiency in finishing output. A player with more goals scored than their xG number illustrates an overperforming player. Expected goals (xG) is a model-based statistic that estimates the probability of a shot resulting in a goal.
Who were the efficient finishers?
This scatterplot highlights the players who were deemed to overperform this season (presented in green) or underperform (presented in red).
Phil Foden, Cole Palmer and Son Heung-min scored more goals during the 2023/24 season than expected according to xG figures, which showcase these players had an extreme impact for their team, beyond the expectations of the scoring opportunities presented to them, and overperformed in terms of goal scoring. In contrast, players such as Mohamed Salah, Nicolas Jackson and Darwin Nunez scored fewer goals than what was expected according to the xG figures, which indicates these players were not efficient in front of goal and underperformed during the 2023/24 season.
| The Efficiency Elite: 2023/24 Clinical Finishers | ||||
| Top 10 players by Goals Scored Above Expectation (G - xG) | ||||
| Player | Team | Actual Goals (G) | Expected Goals (xG) | Efficiency Surplus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phil Foden | Manchester City | 19 | 10.3 | 8.7 |
| Jean-Philippe Mateta | Crystal Palace | 16 | 10.9 | 5.1 |
| Son Heung-min | Tottenham | 17 | 12.0 | 5.0 |
| Diogo Jota | Liverpool | 10 | 5.3 | 4.7 |
| Michael Olise | Crystal Palace | 10 | 5.5 | 4.5 |
| Jarrod Bowen | West Ham | 16 | 11.6 | 4.4 |
| Hwang Hee-chan | Wolves | 12 | 7.7 | 4.3 |
| Leandro Trossard | Arsenal | 12 | 7.9 | 4.1 |
| Elijah Adebayo | Luton Town | 10 | 5.9 | 4.1 |
| Cole Palmer | Chelsea | 22 | 18.2 | 3.8 |
The table above further illustrates these overperforming players. Phil Foden overperformed during the 2023/24 season, and scored 9 more goals than expected according to xG, and subsequently led his team, Manchester City, to Premier League glory while picking up the league’s official and the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) Player of the Year award along the way.
The above illustrates the list ranking the league’s top goalscorers from the season and illustrates their effectiveness compared to their xG figures. Erling Haaland won the league’s Golden Boot for scoring the most goals, with 27 goals, yet underperformed in terms of xG. In contrast, Cole Palmer finished 2nd in the rankings with 22 goals and exceeded his xG, while Alexander Isak, in third, nearly met his expected goals exactly.
Penalties vs Open Play
Penalty kicks are a staple method of scoring and increasing a forward’s efficiency numbers. It is important to contextualise these figures when understanding scoring efficiency as a penalty kick taken has an increasingly more likely chance to increase their goals scored tally throughout a season compared to a player who is not their team’s penalty kick taker. This is illustrated through Haaland, Palmer and Isak, who finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively, and all three players are their clubs’ penalty kick taker. These penalty figures are displayed above. Cole Palmer finished second in the Golden Boot race, despite 9 of his 22 goals (41%) being scored from penalties.
In contrast, Phil Foden and Ollie Watkins both scored more goals than Palmer and Isak from open play throughout the season, but ranked outside the top three due to a lack of penalty goals.
Similarly, Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka finished the season as Arsenal’s top goalscorer with more total goals scored (16) than Arsenal teammates Kai Havertz (13) and Leandro Trossard (12), despite the fact that Saka only scored 10 goals from open play compared to 12 goals from Havertz and Trossard. The total goals scored would indicate Saka had a more efficient scoring season, yet Havertz and Trossard were Arsenal’s primary scorers from open play.
Overall Team Finishing Performance
| The Clinical Elite: Team Efficiency Ranking | ||||
| Top 10 squads by Goals Scored Above Expectation (G - xG) | ||||
| Team | Squad_Size | Total Goals | Total xG | Efficiency Surplus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manchester City | 25 | 94 | 82.0 | 12.0 |
| Arsenal | 25 | 86 | 78.1 | 7.9 |
| Crystal Palace | 26 | 56 | 49.1 | 6.9 |
| Aston Villa | 31 | 72 | 65.2 | 6.8 |
| Luton Town | 28 | 49 | 43.7 | 5.3 |
| Newcastle Utd | 32 | 83 | 77.7 | 5.3 |
| West Ham | 26 | 58 | 52.7 | 5.3 |
| Fulham | 25 | 54 | 52.3 | 1.7 |
| Chelsea | 32 | 76 | 76.0 | 0.0 |
| Manchester Utd | 31 | 57 | 57.0 | 0.0 |
Reviewing overall team performance illustrates that overall efficiency can lead to greater team results. Manchester City finished the 2023/24 season as the greatest overperforming team in terms of scoring, scoring 12 more goals than expected, and subsequently were crowned the winners of the Premier League. Similarly, Arsenal finished second, scoring 8 more goals than expected, and finished 2nd overall that season.
However, it is important to note that xG does not equal success, as displayed by Luton Town. Despite Luton Town exceeding their xG by 5 goals, they will finish the season in 18th place and were relegated to the Championship, the second-tier of English football. This is due to the low number of actual goals scored. Although their xG remained high, their chance creation and amount of goals remained low, which ultimately led to Luton Town’s relegation. Although Newcastle finished with the same xG difference as Luton Town (5.3), Newcastle scored 83 goals compared to Luton Town’s 49 goals.
Player Profiles
How do the league’s top players compare?
When comparing the top elite attacking talent across the Premier League 2023/24 season, various profiles of forward players present themselves. Erling Haaland, the league’s Golden Boot Winner, is a finisher and primary role is to finish chances and score goals. Ollie Watkins falls into this category of forward, too. In comparison, as illustrated earlier, Bukayo Saka is not Arsenal’s primary finisher, especially from open play. Instead, Saka and Son Heung-min are providers and creators of chances for their teams, as shown through their heavy assists numbers (xAG) and Progressive Carry yards (a dribble where the ball moves forward to beat defensive lines, gain territory, and advance play into the final third or box). Mohamed Salah and Phil Foden share an even spread between being a creator of chances and finishing chances.
Youth Impact
The Premier League continued to see the rise of youth talent strive across the league. When reviewing the most impactful players below the age of 21, Manchester United dominated in showcasing youth talent, as Rasmus Hojlund was the leagues most impactful u21 player, with a total of 12 goals and assists across the season and Alejandro Garnacho finished with 11 for Manchester United. Liverpool’s Harvey Elliot also had a breakout season and finished the season with 9 goals and assists.
Team Context
Disciplinary Records
| The Disciplinary Leaderboard: 2023/24 Season | |||
| Ranking Premier League squads by total caution and dismissal volume | |||
| Team | Yellow Cards | Red Cards | Weighted Points* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chelsea | 108 | 4 | 120 |
| Sheffield Utd | 101 | 5 | 116 |
| Wolves | 102 | 4 | 114 |
| Tottenham | 92 | 4 | 104 |
| Aston Villa | 94 | 2 | 100 |
| Brighton | 90 | 3 | 99 |
| Burnley | 77 | 7 | 98 |
| Brentford | 89 | 2 | 95 |
| Fulham | 83 | 4 | 95 |
| Nott'ham Forest | 82 | 3 | 91 |
| West Ham | 82 | 3 | 91 |
| Bournemouth | 79 | 3 | 88 |
| Manchester Utd | 83 | 1 | 86 |
| Everton | 82 | 1 | 85 |
| Liverpool | 69 | 5 | 84 |
| Newcastle Utd | 79 | 1 | 82 |
| Crystal Palace | 73 | 2 | 79 |
| Luton Town | 71 | 0 | 71 |
| Arsenal | 64 | 2 | 70 |
| Manchester City | 53 | 2 | 59 |
| *Points calculated as: Yellow (1 pt) and Red (3 pts) | |||
Team disciplinary is displayed in the table above. Chelsea finished the season as the most ill-discuplined team, with a total of 108 yellow cards and 4 red cards across the season. Burnley received the highest number of red cards with 7 across the season and Chelsea led in terms of yellow cards with 108.
Burnley finished the season in 19th and were relegated from the Premier League, illustrating the direct negative impact these 7 red cards impacted their season. Similarly, Manchester City finished the season as the most disciplined team overall, with 53 yellow cards and 2 red cards, and were crowned champions.
Conclusion
Overall, the Premier League is diverse and attracts the world’s elite players across all nationalities and ages. These player performances throughout the season were evaluated in terms of efficiency, and illustrated how Phil Foden was a standout player throughout the season due to massively overperforming his total goals tally and impact, and how this aided Manchester City in becoming Premier League champions. Additionally, Manchester City as a team overall exceeded expectations in terms of total goals scored compared to their xG stats.
Penalty vs Open Play goals were further analysed to showcase the impact penalties can have on the golden boot race and on players’ overall effectiveness within the attacking patterns for a team, as shown through Arsenal. Similarly, forward player profiles were displayed through a radar graph to showcase the various types of attacking players presented at the elite level within the Premier League.
The league’s most impactful youth players, with Manchester United dominating, were further showcased, in addition to highlighting team discipline, where Burnley were punished for a lack of discipline, while Manchester City gained the advantage of proper discipline throughout a league campaign.