Who’s scoring the most? Who has the most robust defence?

We’re just seven games into the 2025–26 Premier League season and already onto our second international break.

Arsenal sit top of the league, a point ahead of Liverpool, while Tottenham, Bournemouth, and Manchester City make up the chasing pack.

Wolves sit comfortably bottom, with two points and no wins so far, and are joined in the relegation zone by Burnley and West Ham.

Propping up the middle of the table are Manchester United, in 10th, and Newcastle United, in 11th.

But how did they all get here? Who’s performing well, and who’s doing poorly? Who‘s scoring the most and conceding the most chances? Which players and teams have made the most passes? Or had the most shots? Who’s outscoring or underscoring their predicted xG?

As the league prepares to resume this weekend, let’s take stock of where we are.

Goals

Arsenal are the top goal scorers so far, with 14 goals from seven games, an average of 2 goals scored per game. They’re followed closely by Chelsea, Liverpool, and Manchester City, who have all scored 13.

Those 14 Arsenal goals have come from all over the pitch, with 9 different players contributing. City, by contrast, only have 5 different goal scorers, led, of course, by Erling Haaland, who bagged 9 of their 13 goals and who currently sits as the league’s leading scorer.

Haaland’s scoring rate, incidentally, of 1.29 goals per game puts him currently on track to hit 48 league goals this season, which would surpass his own record of 36 league goals set during the 2022–23 season. But it's early days yet, so let’s not get too excited.

The league’s lowest scorers so far are Wolves, with 4, and Nottingham Forest, with 5.

Goals on their own, however, don’t always tell the story.

Chances

The Expected Goals (xG) metric is a strong indicator of the number and quality of chances created (see this xG explainer if you’re unfamiliar with the concept).

A team with, say, 2.0 xG in a game can be said to have had enough good quality chances that they’d be expected, statistically, to have scored 2 goals.

Manchester United lead the league on this metric, with an average of 1.94 xG per 90 minutes. United have also had the most total shots so far this season (107), so they’re creating chances and, in an ideal world, they’d finish those chances and be scoring close to two goals per game, like Arsenal. Unfortunately, their players have only managed to score 7 all season (additionally, they’ve had two own goals in their favour).

The next highest chance-creators are Crystal Palace, with 1.82 xG per 90 minutes, Manchester City, with 1.73, and Arsenal, with 1.70.

The team creating the fewest high-quality chances are Burnley, with just 0.70 xG per 90 minutes from the opening seven games.

But again, creating chances isn’t everything — you need to score from them.

Chances Taken

By calculating Goals minus xG (let's call that Gls-xG here), we can get a sense of who over- or underperformed in terms of finishing their chances. A team scoring just 1 goal from 3 xG (so, -2 Gls-xG), for example, suggests wastefulness in front of goal, or an inability to put away good chances.

Conversely, scoring 5 goals in a match from 1 xG (so a more favourable +4 Gls-xG) suggests a team has been incredibly clinical or lucky.

Tottenham currently lead the league here. Spurs’ attackers scored 12 goals from 7.4 xG, which sees them at +4.6 Gls-xG. They’ve scored around 4 and a half goals more than we’d statistically have expected them to, based on the chances that fell to them.

Behind them, Bournemouth managed to score 11 goals from 8.4 xG (+2.6 Gls-xG), while Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Burnley all sit on +2.1 Gls-xG.

The worst performer, unsurprisingly, is Manchester United, whose players netted just 7 goals from a total 13.6 xG (-6.6).

A contributor to this poor xG conversion is Mattheus Cunha, who has attempted 15 shots, managed to keep 7 on target, but has yet to score. No other player in the league has taken more shots without scoring.

So United are creating the most goal-scoring opportunities. They’re just not sticking them away.

Passes

Manchester City have completed the most passes so far this season, 3,474 (around 496 per game), with a pass completion percentage of 86%, the highest in the league.

Burnley were their opposite on both measures, with the lowest number of passes completed, 1,795, and the worst overall passing accuracy, 73.2%.

What about different types of pass?

Manchester United completed the most long balls, with 283. At the lower end, Manchester City completed 195, and Burnley just 190.

In terms of progressing the ball up the pitch, Liverpool completed 337 progressive passes and 298 passes into the final third, ranking first and second, respectively, for those two metrics. Nottingham Forest were their rivals, here, completing 332 progressive passes (2nd-highest) and 305 passes into the final third (highest).

Brentford ranked bottom for both of these measures, playing just 155 progressive passes and only 139 passes into the final third.

Liverpool (72) and Arsenal (70) completed the most passes into the penalty area, while Brentford (26) and Burnley (30) completed the least.

Wolves (28) and Manchester United (25) completed the most crosses into the penalty area. Arsenal and Chelsea both completed just 7.

And who took the most corners? That would be Arsenal, with 53. I guess you’re incentivised to play for corners when you know how adept you are at scoring from them. Chelsea were next, with 45 corners. Burnley have taken only 21.

As for individual players, Nottingham Forest midfielder Elliot Anderson has completed the most passes overall (513), Aston Villa defender Ezri Konsa has the highest pass completion percentage (95.2%), Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford has completed the most long passes (85), and Fulham’s Alex Iwobi has completed the most passes into the penalty area (22).

Mohammed Kudus of Spurs and Jack Grealish of Everton jointly lead the league in assists, with 4 each.

Defending

West Ham sit in 19th place in the league, having lost five of their opening seven matches, with 16 goals conceded, the most of any team.

Just ahead of them in the league, 18th-place Burnley have conceded 15 goals, and the bottom club, Wolves, have conceded 14.

Those 14 goals against Wolves have come from an xG-Against of just 9.4, suggesting Wolves have been unlucky, or they’ve faced clinical strikers, or their goalkeeper hasn’t played very well. (We’ll get the Wolves keeper in the next section)

Arsenal have the leanest defence, conceding just 3 goals so far. They’re closely followed by Tottenham, Crystal Palace, and Newcastle, who have all conceded 5.

A lack of chances conceded is a major contributing factor to Arsenal’s watertight defence. Their opponents recorded just 0.62 xG per game against Arsenal, the lowest in the league.

Burnley, at the other extreme, have allowed their opponents 1.91 xG per game. Thankfully for Burnley fans, their team have also blocked the most shots (40).

Wolves are the top tacklers so far, with 170 tackles attempted and 94 tackles won, suggesting they’ve spent more time defending than any other team.

And for errors leading to a shot at goal: Everton have made the most, with 9, and Arsenal are the least error-prone, with just 1.

Goalkeeping

We’ve already examined which teams conceded the most, but luckily, there’s also a metric for measuring how effective a goalkeeper has been at stopping shots. Bear with me here…

Post-Shot Expected Goals (PSxG) measures how likely a keeper is to save each shot, and Post-Shot Expected Goals minus Goals Allowed (PSxG-GA) measures how many goals the keeper actually let in versus the number of good chances they faced.

FBref’s guidelines explain that a positive number indicates a goalkeeper has had better luck or an above-average ability to stop a shot. In this case, José Sá, the Wolves goalkeeper, has the lowest PSxG-GA in the league so far, with -3.9. In other words, he’s let in almost 4 goals more than he probably should have.

The best performing keepers on this metric are Dean Henderson of Crystal Palace, with +2.5, Sunderland’s Robin Roefs (+2.23), and Guglielmo Vicario of Spurs (+2.2).

Newcastle‘s Nick Pope has been the most effective keeper on crosses, stopping 19% of the 84 crosses he has faced.

The least effective goalkeepers at dealing with crosses so far are Brighton’s Bart Verbruggen, Vicario of Spurs, Matz Sels of Forest, and Liverpool’s Alisson. They’ve all stopped less than 4% of the crosses against them.

How do different keepers play with the ball at their feet? Sam Johnstone of Wolves has launched 58.3% of his passes so far, the highest percentage in the league, followed by Leeds United’s Lucas Perri, on 57.1%.

At the other end of the spectrum, Vicario and Alisson favoured shorter passing, recording the lowest percentages of passes launched upfield (22.6% and 23%, respectively).

From goal kicks, Lucas Perri has gone long 95% of the time, while Matz Sels has launched just 21.4% of his goal kicks.

As for venturing out of the box, Nick Pope has made the most defensive actions outside the penalty area, with 23 so far.

Arsenal’s David Raya shows the most propensity to wander from goal — his defensive actions outside the box have occurred an average of 18.7 yards from his own goal line, the furthest in the league.

One final observation is the interesting contrast between the two Manchester City keepers. James Trafford, who has featured in 3 games so far, averaged 4.67 defensive actions outside his own box, whereas in his 4 appearances, Gianluigi Donnarumma has averaged just 0.25 actions outside the penalty area. They are, respectively, the highest and lowest averages in the league.

Discipline

Fulham have committed the most fouls, 98, while City committed the least, just 57. There’s less opportunity to foul opponents when you spend most of the time in possession of the ball.

Brighton have received the most yellow cards to date, 22, followed by Everton (18) and Palace (17).

The teams with the lowest number of yellow cards so far are Manchester United and Newcastle, both with 8. Fair play.

We can revisit all these statistics later in the season, say around Christmas time, to see how they have progressed. Follow Sports Things if you wish to be notified when that gets published.

The Premier League resumes on Saturday, 18th October 2025, with Nottingham Forest hosting Chelsea in the lunchtime fixture (12:30 pm kick-off).

In the late game, at 5:30 pm, league leaders Arsenal take on Fulham at Craven Cottage.

Note: All of the statistics in this article were sourced from FBref, which is an excellent resource for football data.

Premier League 2025–26: Key Stats and Trends So Far was originally published in Sports Things on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How good has the Gunners’ start been?

When the 2025–26 fixtures were first announced, it appeared Arsenal might have a challenging start to the season.

An opening-weekend trip to Old Trafford, followed by Anfield two weeks later, then the visit of Manchester City to the Emirates just a few weeks after that. Sandwiched in between were games against newly-promoted Leeds United, plus Nottingham Forest and Newcastle, who finished seventh and fifth respectively in the Premier League last season. Add in the opening Champions League fixtures, and Mikel Arteta had a lot on his plate.

He’d want to avoid the stuttering start Arsenal suffered last season, of course, where four draws and two defeats in their opening eleven league games left Arteta’s side nine points adrift of Liverpool in the title race. Just a few poor results in this season’s tricky opening run had the potential to derail Arsenal’s season before it had properly begun.

But, at the time of writing, Arsenal sit top of the Premier League with five wins from seven, having conceded only three goals. They lie fifth in the Champions League table with two wins, having conceded no goals at all. And they’re comfortably through to the fourth round of the EFL Cup.

So, as we go into the international break, Arsenal are in a good place. Let’s examine how they got there.

Premier League: Manchester United 0–1 Arsenal

The opening game was a huge potential banana skin for the Gunners.

They lined up with a familiar back five of David Raya, Ben White, William Saliba, Gabriel, and Riccardo Calafiori, giving them much-needed defensive solidity. In a new-look midfield, defensive midfielder Martin Zubimendi joined Martin Odegaard and Declan Rice, and in the forward line, marquee signing Viktor Gyökeres was flanked by the conventional winger combination of Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli.

An improved Manchester United side dominated large periods of this fixture. The stats show they had more possession (61.1% vs. 38.9%), more shots (22 vs 9), and more shots on target (7 vs 3) than Arsenal, but ultimately, a string of saves from Raya and Arsenal’s prowess from set pieces won the day. In the 13th minute, Rice curled in a dangerous corner which the United keeper flapped at, allowing Calafiori to put away the only goal of the game.

Gyökeres, a major talking point pre-game, largely had a debut to forget, completing just 5 passes and failing to attempt a single shot at goal. He was much criticised for seemingly touching his hair more than he touched the ball.

Arsenal rarely threatened United, managing to score 1 goal from their 1.05 xG, but they demonstrated resilience, coming away with a clean sheet and three points from a tough opening fixture. It was a solid, if unspectacular, performance and on another day, the Gunners may have only secured a point.

But a win’s a win, and at Old Trafford on the opening day of the season, I’m grading that win 7/10.

Premier League: Arsenal 5–0 Leeds United

Arsenal unveiled new signing Eberechi Eze before their first home game, much to the delight of the Emirates crowd. In the starting lineup, Jurien Timber replaced White at right back, and Noni Madueke, newly arrived from Chelsea, took Martinelli’s left wing spot.

Arsenal completely dominated this game. Timber opened the scoring with a 34th-minute header from a Rice corner, and Saka slotted home from a narrow angle in first-half injury time, to make it 2–0 at the break.

Early in the second half, Gyökeres cut in from the left into a crowded penalty area and smashed home his first-ever Arsenal goal, and shortly after, Timber bundled in another Rice corner to make it 4–0.

Just after the hour mark, 15-year-old Max Dowman came on for his Premier League debut and looked lively. His jinking run late in the game resulted in a penalty, which Gyökeres put away for his second, and Arsenal’s fifth.

Arsenal completely outclassed Leeds in this game, enjoying 67.5% possession, completing 599 passes to Leeds’s 290, and enjoying a favourable xG of 2.82 against just 0.16 for Leeds. A spotless performance was only tarnished by injuries to Saka and Odegaard.

Although it was perhaps not against the strongest of opposition, it’s difficult not to award such domination of a game 8/10.

Premier League: Liverpool 1–0 Arsenal

To Anfield next. In theory, the toughest game of the season.

Martinelli was restored to the left wing, Madueke took the injured Saka’s place on the right, and Mikel Merino filled in for the injured Odegaard. The back five remained unchanged.

This was an even game, with the possession split at 53%-47%. Liverpool managed 9 shots to Arsenal’s 11, and both teams recorded around 0.5 xG. There wasn’t much to choose between them.

It was only a moment of magic that decided the game in the latter stages, as Liverpool’s Dominik Szoboszlai beat Raya from 30 yards with a magnificent free kick.

To add to the disappointment for the Gunners, Saliba limped off injured after just 5 minutes of the game. As a mild consolation, his replacement, Christian Mosquera, looked composed in just his second Arsenal appearance.

It was tempting to award Arsenal 6/10 here — after all, they were only narrowly denied a point at Anfield. But in reality, Arsenal offered little here (just 1 shot on target), and lost points to a team almost certain to be their rivals in the title race. It’s hard to take many positives from a poor day. 5/10.

Premier League: Arsenal 3–0 Nottingham Forest

Last season, Nottingham Forest enjoyed their first season in the top flight for several decades, and they managed to finish 7th. So this wasn’t always going to be an easy game. (Incidentally, this was former Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou’s first game in charge at Forest)

Mosquera replaced the injured Saliba at the back, Madueke continued on the right wing in place of the injured Saka, and Eze made his debut, starting on the left ahead of Martinelli. Odegaard also returned for the starting lineup, with Rice dropped to the bench for reasons unknown.

Even without Saliba, Rice, Saka, and Martinelli, Arsenal dominated the opening parts of the game. Madueke was largely instrumental, causing havoc down Forest’s left side, dribbling into the penalty area, and delivering several accurate corners. From one of these, in the 32nd minute, Zubimendi opened the scoring, connecting with a spectacular volley from the edge of the box. He almost repeated the feat with another volley a few minutes later.

Eze had been quiet on the opposite wing, but early in the second half, he got onto the end of a Calafiori long ball, cutting it first time across the penalty box for Gyökeres to tap home from close range.

In the 79th minute, in a well-executed set-piece routine, substitute Leandro Trossard clipped the ball across the box for Zubimendi to head home and make it 3–0.

The only tarnish was, again, an injury that forced Odegaard out of the game.

Like the Leeds game, Arsenal were dominant here. Defensively solid, even without Saliba, they restricted Forest to an xG of 0.22 and just 1 shot on target. Going forward, Arsenal also looked impressive, threatening from all angles and scoring a variety of goals.

This was a solid and dominant performance, 7/10.

Champions League: Athletic Club 0–2 Arsenal

It’s never easy to win away in the Champions League, especially against a decent Spanish side.

The lineup remained much the same, but with Odegaard unavailable, Rice was restored to the starting XI alongside Zubimendi and Merino.

This was a tough game for Arsenal. Athletic, backed by a raucous home crowd, started quickly, causing Arsenal successive problems at the back in the opening exchanges. Gyökeres had one reasonable chance — a diving header from close range — but otherwise Arsenal offered little in the first half and for much of the second.

In the 71st minute, Martinelli was introduced for the ineffective Eze. Within seconds, Trossard, also on as a substitute, had flicked on a through ball, sending Martinelli racing clear of two defenders, and the Brazilian slotted home beneath the Athletic keeper to break the deadlock.

In the closing minutes of the game, Martinelli returned the favour. Dribbling around defenders to the byline, he cut the ball back to a waiting Trossard, who finished calmly to seal the victory.

Although Arsenal were clinging on in the early parts of this game, this was a sound away win where they demonstrated composure, resilience and patience, as well as touches of class. A win and a clean sheet at the top level of European competition is always a great result. 8/10.

Premier League: Arsenal 1-1 Manchester City

Arsenal flew back from Spain and swiftly hosted Manchester City at the Emirates. The game immediately following a European fixture is never easy, and this was no exception.

Saliba returned from injury in place of Mosquera, and Trossard replaced Eze on the left, but the lineup was otherwise unchanged from the Athletic game.

Man City took an early lead, Erling Haaland coolly placing the ball past Raya to finish a counter-attack in the 9th minute. Arsenal offered little in response; struggling from a lack of creativity in midfield, they were starved of any meaningful chances in the first half.

They looked brighter and sharper after the break, with the introduction of Saka (back from injury) and Eze adding an extra dimension and intensity to Arsenal’s attack. They pushed for an equaliser that might never have come but for the late introduction of Martinelli.

In the 93rd minute, Eze picked up the ball deep in midfield and played it long over the top for Martinelli, who controlled cleverly and finished with a deft chip over the advancing Gianluigi Donnarumma. Once again, it was the Brazilian, on as a late substitute, who provided the breakthrough Arsenal needed.

The point rescued was a solid one, but questions were asked of Arteta’s team selection: a midfield trio of Merino, Zubimendi, and Rice provides steel, but does it offer enough creativity going forward?

In the end, the point against a top side was a decent one, although, like in the games against United and Liverpool, the performance was not entirely convincing. 6/10.

EFL Cup: Port Vale 0–2 Arsenal

A midweek cup game against League One opposition was a chance for Arteta to rest players. Thankfully, heavy investment in the squad over the summer meant many of his “second string” players had enough quality to see off Port Vale.

Arsenal started with Kepa in goal, while Gabriel was rested, and Saliba partnered with Mosquera for the first time. White and Miles Lewis-Skelly started as full-backs (MLS featured in most games so far as a substitute), and Arteta opted for the unfamiliar midfield combination of Nwaneri, Norgaard, and Eze. Up front, Saka and Martinelli started on the wings, with Merino deputising as striker.

Arsenal took an early lead, scoring in the 8th minute through Eze, who slipped the ball into the bottom corner of the net from close range to bag his first goal for the club. From then on, they made a meal of things. Dominating the ball (over 80% possession), they struggled to put the game to bed, and it took until the 86th minute before Trossard — again off the bench — smashed home to make it a comfortable-looking 2–0 victory.

Arsenal got the job done here, but there were nervy moments, particularly from set pieces, and it was not a particularly impressive performance. But again, they kept a clean sheet and won the game. 6/10.

Premier League: Newcastle 1–2 Arsenal

St James’ Park has been a bogey ground for Arsenal in recent years. Coming into this game, they’d won one and lost four of their last five away matches against Eddie Howe’s side.

Arteta’s lineup, perhaps his most adventurous yet, saw Zubimendi and Rice starting in midfield, and Eze, Saka, and Trossard supporting Gyökeres up front. Timber and Calafirori returned as full-backs, with Mosquera and Gabriel in the centre of defence.

The Gunners could have taken the lead in the first half: Gyökeres had a penalty given and then overturned, and Trossard rocketed the ball against the post. But it was Newcastle who scored first, giant striker Nick Woltemade rising to head in a Sandro Tonali cross in the 34th minute.

For the rest of the game, Newcastle were subject to wave after wave of Arsenal attack, with Odegaard pulling the strings after entering the game late on his return from injury. Ultimately, it another late substitute, this time Merino, who got Arsenal onto the scoresheet. Taking the place of Calafiori for the final 20 minutes, the Spanish midfielder-cum-striker leapt above all to get his head onto a Declan Rice cross and level the score, just 6 minutes from time. “Big,” said Gary Neville on Sky’s television commentary. And it was.

Not satisfied with a solitary point, Arsenal continued to pile on the pressure, and in the 96th minute, Gabriel’s header from Arsenal’s twelfth corner of the game made it 2–1. “Oh, they’ve stolen it!” shouted Sky commentator Peter Drury. “It feels absolutely huge,” observed Neville.

And it may prove to be huge in the long run. This was the kind of fight back that wins league titles. A spirited, resilient performance, with a dramatic ending that might prove to be a pivotal moment that supporters reminisce about at the end of the season. Massive. 9/10.

Champions League: Arsenal 2–0 Olympiacos

Back to the Emirates for a midweek game against Greek champions Olympiacos.

Arteta continued to shuffle his starting eleven. White and Lewis-Skelly started as full-backs, either side of Saliba and Gabriel. Odegaard’s return to the starting lineup saw him join Zubimendi and Merino in midfield, with Rice rested, while Martinelli, Gyökeres, and Trossard made up the forward line.

This was another comfortable victory at the Emirates, where Arsenal controlled much of the game. They saw more of the ball than Olympiacos (61% possession) and created an xG of 2.72 versus their opponent’s 0.51. Raya made a couple of fine saves to keep out the Greek side’s rare chances.

It was Arsenal’s captain, however, who stole the limelight. Odegaard dominated the midfield and spearheaded attacks with several threaded through-balls — his 12 progressive passes, 6 passes into the penalty area, and 4 key passes were all the most of any player on the pitch. Crucially, in the 12th minute, he played through Gyökeres, whose shot was tipped onto the post before Martinelli flicked in the rebound. Another incisive pass from Odegaard in the 92nd minute found Saka, who blasted through the keeper’s legs to make it 2–0, ensuring a perfect start to Arsenal’s Champions League campaign.

Another competent, assured, and professional performance, if admittedly unspectacular. Two wins from two without conceding in the Champions League is decent work. 7/10.

Premier League: Arsenal 2–0 West Ham United

Arsenal hosted a struggling West Ham in the final round of Premier League fixtures before the international break.

In Arteta’s 300th game in charge, he fielded a back five of Raya, Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, and Calafiori behind a midfield trio of Odegaard, Rice, and Eze. In attack, Saka and Trossard started on either side of Gyökeres. A distinctive feature of Arsenal this season is the greater squad depth, allowing for significant rotation.

It was another comfortable win for the Gunners, who dominated possession (67.9%), attempted 21 shots to West Ham’s 4, and limited the Hammers to just 0.49 xG, with not a single shot on target.

Despite again losing Odegaard to injury after half an hour, Arsenal took the lead just 8 minutes later. Zubmendi played a through-ball into the box for Eze, whose shot was parried by the keeper into the path of Rice, who placed the ball into the roof of the net.

The Gunners doubled their lead in the 67th minute. Timber was fouled in the penalty area and Saka confidently stuck away the resulting penalty for his second goal in two games. More importantly, this win, combined with a late Chelsea goal against Liverpool, saw Arsenal leap to the top of the Premier League table.

It’s tempting to give an 8/10 for this performance, as Arsenal controlled the game and limited their opposition to just a few speculative chances, winning comfortably with yet another clean sheet. But, realistically, this win came against a poor West Ham side, so 7/10 will do. Let’s not get too carried away.

So what does all that add up to? Based on my arbitrary scoring system, Arsenal are awarded an average rating of 7/10 across their opening 10 games. They haven’t always looked spectacular going forward, averaging 2 goals per game, but defensively, they look extremely assured, conceding only 3 goals and keeping 7 clean sheets along the way. It’s a great basis for long-term success.

So they’re plodding along nicely, dominating some teams and managing to eke out results against others. There’s room for improvement, perhaps, in the bigger games — narrowly beating United, drawing with City, and losing to Liverpool is not hugely impressive — but they’re on the right track.

For now, the Premier League title race is in Arsenal’s hands, and they’re in a strong position in Europe. We’ll see what the rest of the season has in store.

Arsenal’s next fixture, after the international break, is a Premier League game against 14th-place Fulham at Craven Cottage, on Saturday, 18th October.

Rating Arsenal Performances in the First 10 Games of the 2025–26 Season was originally published in Sports Things on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An analysis of wage spending across the ‘Big 5’ European leagues

In a recent article, I mentioned that the total wage spend across the Big 5 European football leagues for the 2024–25 season was around £5 billion*.

So that’s 96 teams across the top divisions in England, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy collectively spending just over £5 billion (or €6.1 billion / $6.9 billion if you prefer those currencies), for an average wage spend of £53.7 million per team.

But that spending is not distributed evenly across teams nor across leagues. So who spends what? Which leagues spend the most collectively, and which league has the most disparity in terms of wage spending?

Which teams spend more than their league rivals and, most importantly, how does higher or lower wage spend correlate with eventual league position? Does spending big money on higher wages guarantee sporting success? Who has over- or underperformed their wage spend?

Allow me to sift through the data and answer these questions for you…

*You can find the supporting data for this claim, and indeed the majority of the article below, at FBref (some of the wage bills are estimated).

How much does each league spend?

Let’s begin with wage spending by league.

During the 2024–25 season, the Premier League had by far the biggest annual wage bill, sitting at around £1.9 billion.

La Liga clubs spent the second-most, £979 million, followed by Serie A and the Bundesliga, on £893 million and £822 million respectively.

The French Ligue 1 had the lowest collective wage bill, at around £563 million, less than a third of that spent by Premier League clubs.

Let's visualise that in a bar graph:

However, total spend by league doesn’t account for the difference in the number of teams per league.

The Premier League, La Liga and Serie A all contain twenty teams; the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 only have eighteen.

So perhaps a fairer way to look at things is average spend per team within each league.

The Premier League still comes out on top, with around £95 million spent per team on player wages.

The Bundesliga (£46 million) now sits between La Liga (£49 million) and Serie A (£45 million).

And Ligue 1’s average spend per team sits at £31 million.

An updated chart now looks like this:

What about within each league? How much do wage bills differ between teams?

Disparity in wage spending within each league

Premier League

In the 2024–25 season, the top wage spenders in the Premier League were Manchester City (£202 million) and Manchester United (£181 million), followed closely by Chelsea (£172 million) and Arsenal (£169 million).

Liverpool spent £129 million, and the next thirteen teams sit somewhere in the range between £50–110 million. At the lower end of things, Brentford’s wage spend was just £41 million and Ipswich’s just £34 million.

Although there is some disparity in spending power between Premier League teams, the disparity here is much less than in other leagues, as we shall see.

La Liga

La Liga’s wage spend distribution is much more skewed towards the biggest three teams.

Unsurprisingly, Real Madrid spent the most (£230 million), followed by Barcelona (£166 million) and Atletico Madrid (£116 million). Combined, these three make up 52% of the wage spend for the entire league.

Every other club in La Liga spent £51 million or less. In fact, removing those top three teams from the equation drops the average annual wage bill in La Liga from £49 million to just £27.5 million.

Bundesliga

The Bundesliga spend is dominated by one team, Bayern Munich, who had a wage bill of £221 million. On their own, Bayern account for almost 27% of the entire Bundesliga wage bill.

Dortmund (£94 million), RB Leipzig (£86 million), and Leverkusen (£66 million) follow, but after that, no other team breached the £50 million mark.

Notably, ten of the eighteen top-flight German clubs spent less than the Premier League’s lowest spenders, Ipswich.

Serie A

Serie A demonstrated less spending disparity than La Liga or the Bundesliga.

And the gap between top and bottom is just £105 million — in other leagues, the difference is more than double that amount.

Ligue 1

Like the German top flight, Ligue 1 wage spending is dominated by one club, PSG, who spent £155 million on wages during the 2024–25 season. Again, like Bayern, that’s around 27% of the whole league’s wage bill.

Only five teams in the French top division spent more than Ipswich, the Premier League’s lowest spenders.

Plotting these distributions together on a line graph, we can observe that Premier League wage spending is generally higher throughout the distribution, and that it is also the Premier League that has the most gradual drop-off in wage bill from the highest spenders to the lowest.

But rather than just eyeballing it on a graph, we can measure the economic inequality within each league using the Gini coefficient, which runs on a scale from 0 to 1.

“A Gini coefficient of 0 reflects perfect equality, where all income or wealth values are the same. In contrast, a Gini coefficient of 1 (or 100%) reflects maximal inequality among values, where a single individual has all the income while all others have none.” — Wikipedia

For wage bill spend during the 2024–25 season, the Premier League had a Gini coefficient score of 0.28, representing a reasonable level of equality. To compare Premier League inequality with that of a nation, it measures similarly to Poland or Finland (both scored 0.28 in 2022).

Serie A (0.35) and the Bundesliga (0.36) demonstrated moderately more inequality, at a similar level to countries like Portugal (0.36 in 2022) or China (0.35 in 2021), but not quite as much as the United States (0.42 in 2023).

Ligue 1 (0.44) and La Liga (0.48) show the most economic inequality and are comparable with Costa Rica (0.45 in 2024) or Panama (0.48 in 2023).

(The United Kingdom scored 0.32 in 2021, in case you were wondering.)

So we know which leagues have the most disparity and which teams dominate wage spending. But how does that track with their league performance?

Is there any correlation between wage spend and final league position?

Is higher wage spend correlated with better league position?

Let’s consider the Premier League first.

If we rank each team from 1–20 by how much they spend on wages, and then plot that against where they ultimately finished in the league, we get the scatter graph below.

It shows that, in the Premier League, higher wage spend (towards the right of the graph) is positively correlated with higher league position (towards the top of the graph). However, that correlation is not particularly strong — without the trendline drawn, it might be difficult to identify any discernible trend at all.

At the other end of the scale, let’s plot a similar chart for Serie A. This shows a stronger correlation between wage spend and league position — notice the steeper trendline and the tighter cluster of plots around it.

But again, rather than just looking at graphs, we can calculate the correlation (𝑟) between wage spend rank and eventual league position for each league.

We already know the relationship is a positive one — higher wage spend is broadly correlated with a higher league position — so each league should have an 𝑟 score of between 0 and 1. The closer to 1 the score is, the stronger the correlation and the closer to zero, the weaker the relationship.

For the Premier League, wage rank versus league position has a correlation coefficient (𝑟) of 0.53, suggesting there is a moderate relationship between wage spend and final league position.

The Bundesliga (0.67) and La Liga (0.69) have higher coefficients, suggesting a slightly stronger correlation between wage spend and league position.

Ligue 1 (0.84) and Serie A (0.87) have the highest correlation coefficients, indicating a very strong correlation between wage spend and league position. In France and Italy, then, we can look at a team’s wage spend as a strong indicator of where they might finish in the league.

The Premier League, by contrast, is more unpredictable.

In addition to the scatter plots for the Premier League and Serie A (above), below are the scatter plots for all five leagues, plus a combined one, so you can compare them side by side. Notice how the diagonal trendlines are steeper for Serie A and Ligue 1 compared with the flatter, closer-to-horizontal line of the Premier League:

To examine this wage spend versus league performance metric further, we can get a sense of the overall variation of performance within each league by calculating the standard deviation. This is a measure of the average distance each team varies from the mean— a lower standard deviation measurement means the data points are clustered close to the average, while a high standard deviation means the data points are more spread out.

In practice, this means we can mathematically measure how spread out the dots are in the scatter graphs above. Remember how the Premier League teams (dots) were more unpredictably spread about, whereas the Serie A dots were more tightly clustered around the trendline? Well, that is borne out in the standard deviation measure.

Serie A has a standard deviation of 2.97 — on average across the league, then, teams finished around 3 places above or below where we might expect them to be based on wage expenditure.

The Premier League, by contrast, has a higher standard deviation of 5.75. There is more variation in performance in the Premier League, so, again, we can say with confidence that the Premier League is more unpredictable.

Ligue 1, the Bundesliga, and La Liga scored 3.03, 4.33, and 4.63, respectively.

Before you continue to the next section on over- and under-performers, if you’re interested in examining visualisations of wage data in more detail, on Tableau you can view an interactive version of the bar chart below that enables you to filter by league and by wage bill. (works best on desktop)

That chart also contains a link to the scatter plots above, on which you can hover over each point to view the information for that specific team's spend versus their league position.

Overperformers and underperformers

So, we’ve established that the Premier League is where wage spend outlay has the weakest correlation with league success, and that, conversely, Serie A is where wage spend is the strongest predictor of eventual league position.

We can also state as a broad observation (backed by the data above) that, across the Big 5 European leagues, the teams spending more money tended to finish higher in their respective league tables, and the teams spending less end up near the bottom.

But these are just overall trends. Where are the exceptions? Which teams over- or under-performed the most?

To start with, let’s just observe that 15 of the 96 teams performed exactly how we’d expect them to. These include Bayern Munich and PSG (both top spenders, both finished first in their respective leagues), Aston Villa (6th highest spender in the Premier League, finished 6th), and Getafe (13th highest spender in La Liga, finished 13th), along with Stuttgart, Heidenheim, Atlético Madrid, Athletic Club, Betis, Marseille, Lille, Lens, Brest, Cagliari, and Parma.

As for the overachievers, 42 clubs baulked the trend by finishing in a higher league position than their wage spend might suggest. The most successful were Freiburg (14th highest spenders, finished 5th) and Brentford (19th highest spenders, finished 10th), who both outperformed their expected league positions by nine places. They were followed closely by Rayo Vallecano and Bournemouth (8 places), Toulouse, Brighton and Nottingham Forest (7 places), and Osasuna (6 places).

At the other end of the scale are the underachievers. There are 39 of them, the worst of which is Manchester United, who were the Premier League’s 2nd highest spenders but managed to finish just 15th. They’re followed by Sevilla (lost 12 places), Tottenham (10), Hoffenheim (9), Monza and Las Palmas (7), and Girona and Wolfsburg (6).

Another factor this article hasn’t considered thus far is performance in trans-European competition. It is noteworthy that of the top sixteen highest spenders across these 5 European leagues, half of them made the Champions League quarter-finals: Real Madrid (#1 highest spenders), Bayern Munich (#2), Arsenal (#6), Barcelona (#7), PSG (#8), Inter Milan (#10) Aston Villa (#12), and Borussia Dortmund (#16).

From the remaining eight highest-spending teams, Tottenham (#13) and Manchester United (#4) both made the final of the Europa League (the second tier of European competition), and Chelsea (#5) won the Europa Conference League (the third tier).

So again, as a loose observation of who progressed furthest in the various European cup competitions, we could suggest that higher wage spending is correlated with better sporting performance.

Correlation versus causation

But correlation doesn’t equal causation, of course. Just giving players a lot of money doesn’t guarantee success on the pitch.

Rather, the relationship here is a reciprocal one. In many cases, the teams that have historically been successful (eg. Liverpool, Arsenal) attained the most prestige, the largest fanbases, the most television revenue and most prize money, and thus hold the stature and financial clout to attract the best players, who in turn command the highest wages. With the best players on board, these teams are more likely to have continued success.

In other cases, the money came first (eg. Manchester City, PSG), allowing clubs to fund a squad full of good players, which brought success and subsequent prestige, followed by the resulting spend on better players to sustain that success. Either way it is achieved, it is this continued cycle of football success and outlay on players that keeps the top teams at the top and leaves the smaller teams languishing toward the bottom of league tables, lacking both the funds or stature to attract the best talent.

But any casual watcher of the game could make this observation.

What has been demonstrated in this article, hopefully, is that not all leagues are built equal. While the relationship of spend versus performance is broadly positive across Europe, in some leagues that correlation is stronger than in others. In Serie A (Italy) and Ligue 1 (France), you’re more likely to see the big spenders at the top and the lowest spenders at the bottom. In La Liga, the disparity in spending power between the top teams and those at the bottom means it is difficult for the poorer clubs to overcome that gulf. It’s in the Premier League that you’re more likely to see the most variation, with richer teams like Manchester United finishing 15th and smaller teams like Nottingham Forest finishing as high as 7th.

And that is why we watch sport, isn’t it? For the pure unpredictability of it all.

As a final note, to underline my point, it would be remiss of me not to mention Leicester City. In the Premier League’s 2015–16 season, Leicester City had the fourth-lowest annual wage bill (just £37 million), and they went on to win the league. As the data shows, you’re far less likely to see that happen in any other Big 5 European league.

Here’s another, final link to that Tableau dashboard I mentioned earlier.

You can follow Sports Things if you want to read more stuff like this in future. Yes, that’s the name of it.

Thanks for reading.

How Does Football Wage Spending Correlate With League Performance? A Data Analysis was originally published in Sports Things on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

And who has won the most different races?

The stats in this article are accurate as of 5 October 2025.

It’s the Singapore Grand Prix this weekend, famously the only Formula 1 race that Max Verstappen has not yet won.

The current world champion has finished second twice, in 2018 and 2024, but victory has eluded him thus far in the streets of Singapore.

Why can’t he win it? I don’t know, I’m not an expert, but it’s possibly because it’s an oppressively-hot environment and a narrow circuit. Physically brutal, tough to overtake, and with no margin for error, it’s considered very hard to win.

And that got me thinking: which F1 drivers have won at Singapore? Which drivers have won at the other F1 tracks? Who has won at the most tracks? Or the least?

Well, I’ve crunched the numbers and I can tell you that just four drivers from the current lineup have managed to win at the Marina Bay Street Circuit since it started hosting F1 races in 2008:

• Fernando Alonso in 2008 and 2010
• Lewis Hamilton in 2009, 2014, 2017, and 2018
• Carlos Sainz in 2023
• Lando Norris in 2024

What Verstappen holds over those drivers, however, is the sheer number of other tracks at which he has tasted victory. Of the twenty-four tracks on the current F1 calendar, the Dutchman has won at twenty-three, several on multiple occasions (he has 67 race wins overall).

Hamilton (105 total race wins) has stood atop the podium at twenty-one of the current tracks (as well as some older tracks no longer in use) — the elusive three being Miami, Las Vegas, and the Dutch Grand Prix.

Alonso (32 race wins overall) has won at eleven of the current tracks and, after that, I’m afraid we’re into single figures. The McLaren duo of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris each have nine wins across nine different tracks, while Charles Leclerc has won at seven, Carlos Sainz and George Russell four, and Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly one each.

None of the remaining ten drivers in the current lineup have ever won a Formula 1 race.

I thought it might be nice to visualise all this data, so I’ve compiled a table for you:

Yellow indicates a win, obviously.

So, if you’re interested in (as the title of this article suggests) which drivers have won at which current F1 tracks, find a ruler, line it up with the tracks listed in the image above, and see which rows align with a yellow dot in the various driver columns.

Better yet, visit this Tableau dashboard I just knocked up to view an interactive version of the same chart that allows you to filter by track and/or hover your cursor over each dot for the relevant info. So you won’t need the ruler. (this works best on desktop)

By way of summary, allow me to present to you a bar graph of how many different tracks (again, current tracks) each F1 driver has won at:

It should be noted that, in past seasons, some of these winners have also won at other tracks no longer in use. For example, Germany’s Hockenheim, at which Hamilton won three times, or Kuala Lumpur, where Alonso and Hamilton each had multiple wins before racing there ceased in 2017.

But this article isn’t about those old tracks.

So that’ll do for now. To be honest, this article began with my own curiosity and once I got the answers I was looking for I lost interest in delving any further.

Sometimes it’s good to keep things short and sweet.

One last thing, by way of acknowledgment: If you’re a sports data nerd like me, StatsF1.com is a great resource for, well, F1 stats.

Which Current F1 Drivers Have Won at Which Tracks? was originally published in Sports Things on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A statistical analysis of Leeds, Burnley, and Sunderland’s prospects

Every summer, at the top end of English football, three go down and three go up.

That is to say, three teams are relegated from the Premier League and three teams from the Championship are promoted in their place.

This article is about the three teams on their way up and what their performances in the Championship last season (2024–25) suggest about their prospects of survival in the Premier League next season (2025–26).

First, a short history

Leeds United and Burnley both romped to 100 points in the Championship during the 2024–25 season, finishing in the league’s top two and thereby achieving automatic promotion to the Premier League.

Sunderland, who finished 4th in the league on 76 points, joined them via the promotion playoffs — first winning against Coventry over two legs and then defeating Sheffield United in the final at Wembley.

All three teams have had a taste of the Premier League in recent years:

• Leeds were Premier League stalwarts in the 1990s and early 2000s before financial troubles led to relegation in 2004. After a stint in League One, they returned to the Premier League under Marcelo Bielsa in 2020 but lasted just three seasons. This season’s Championship win sees them return to the top flight at the second attempt.
• Burnley existed outside the top flight from the mid-1970s up until 2009. They’ve since become the archetypal yo-yo club, bouncing between the Premier League and Championship repeatedly over the past fifteen years, with their longest spell at the top being the six seasons from 2016 to 2022 under the stewardship of Sean Dyche. They were relegated from the Premier League at the end of the 2023–24 season.
• Sunderland enjoyed spells in the Premier League in the 1990s and early 2000s punctuated by spells in the second flight. After a decade-long Premier League stint (2007–2017), back-to-back relations saw them drop to League One. They achieved promotion back to the Championship in 2022 and this latest promotion sees them back in the Premier League for the first time in seven years.

What the numbers say

This article is primarily a statistical analysis. I’m neither an obsessive watcher of Championship football nor an experienced tactical analyst.

Instead, I’m focused on the data: what do the goals, shots, possession, and defensive stats for each club suggest about their respective strengths and weaknesses, and do their Championship numbers suggest they have the quality to compete in the Premier League?

Using data from FBref and Stathead, I’ve analysed each team’s underlying metrics from their promotion-winning campaigns to assess their survival prospects.

Let’s start with their attacking threat…

Firepower

Leeds were far and away the highest scorers in the Championship during the 2024–25 season, with 95 goals — more than double the tally of several other clubs, including Millwall, who finished 8th.

In fact, Leeds’ goal tally last season was the highest across all four professional divisions of English football, was the six-highest of all time in the Championship (Man City 2001–02 hold the record of 108 goals), and their goals scored per 90 minutes rate — 2.1 — is comparable with that of Inter Milan and Real Madrid (albeit against weaker opposition). Clearly, they know how to put the ball in the back of the net.

And it’s not just luck. Across all European domestic leagues last season, Leeds’ season xG of 89.1 was second only to Barcelona (91.5). They create bucket-loads of chances.

They also score goals from all over the pitch. Their top scorer was striker Joël Piroe, with 19 league goals, followed by wingers Daniel James (12 goals) and Manor Solomon (10). Add to that contributions from Brenden Aaronson and Wilfried Gnonto (9 goals each), as well as Largie Ramazani and Jayden Bogle (6 goals each), and it’s apparent Leeds rely on a multitude of goalscorers.

Incidentally, those seven different players scoring more than 5 league goals in a season equals the Championship record (tied with Norwich 2023–24 and 2016–17, Fulham 2016–17, Burnley 2008–09, Sheffield United 2002–03, and Manchester City 2001–02). No Championship side has ever had more players exceed 5 league goals in the same season.

Their assists, too, come from a range of providers: Spurs’ loanee Solomon contributed 12 assists, the fourth-highest in the league, Junior Firpo set up 10 goals, and James assisted nine times. All three of them finished in the league’s top ten for assists.

To go one further, Leeds had four players in the Championship’s top 25 assist providers last season. By contrast, Burnley had two players on the same list, and Sunderland had just one.

Burnley, separated from Leeds only by goal difference, were the third-highest scorers in the Championship, with 69 goals. However, a telling statistic is their season xG of just 57.5 — only the tenth-highest in the league — which they outperformed by at least 11 goals.

In other words, they created far fewer chances than Leeds but managed to be ruthless with the chances they did get.

This was largely down to the clinical finishing of attacking midfielder Josh Brownhill, who scored 18 league goals from just 9.9 xG. This standout performance gives him a goals-minus-xG of +8.1, the fourth-highest across all European domestic leagues, putting Brownhill in company with players like Patrick Schick (+8.3), Viktor Gyökeres (+8.2), and Bryan Mbuemo (+7.7).

Zian Flemming was also a key attacking contributor, with 12 goals, and winger Jaidon Anthony managed 8, but no other player managed to score more than 4 league goals, suggesting Burnley perhaps lack the depth of attacking talent seen at Leeds.

Offensively, Sunderland were only the ninth-best team in the Championship last season, scoring just 58 goals.

That they achieved this from a season xG of 58.1 (similar to Burnley) suggests they took their chances — they just did not create many.

Sunderland also struggled for goal scorers. Only Wilson Isidor, with 12 goals, broke into double figures, and their reliance on him is a potential concern given he has previously only ever managed 8 goals in a league season. That said, he does have top-flight experience, having played five seasons in the Russian Premier League, scoring 19 goals in 52 games (27 starts).

So Leeds have been prolific creators of both chances and goals, while Burnley and Sunderland have created far fewer chances but managed to be clinical enough to compete at the top of the table.

Whether they can create — and score — enough in the Premier League might be their biggest challenge.

One thing that will be important in that regard is ball retention…

Ball Retention

Leeds again dominated the league when it came to possession of the football.

They completed 22,829 passes overall, the highest in the league last season and the seventh-highest ever in the Championship. With a pass completion rate of 83.7% and a season average of 61.3% possession, they managed to dominate possession of the ball at a similar rate to Manchester City.

The numbers suggest they prefer to build from the back, with centre-back Joe Rodon completing 3,468 passes, the most in the league, and defensive partner Pascal Struijk completing 2,824 (11th in the league).

Leeds also demonstrated proficiency in progressing the ball. Rodon’s tally of 291 progressive passes was the league’s fifth-highest, ahead of his teammate Ao Tanaka in sixth, with 259. Aaronson and Solomon were both in the top ten for key passes (passes that lead directly to a shot), with 73 and 67 respectively. And five of the top 25 players ranked for passes into the penalty area were Leeds players (Solomon, Aaronson, Bogle, Tanak, Gnoto).

Leeds know how to keep hold of the ball, how to move it up the pitch and how to get it into the penalty area to create chances.

One thing they do not do, however, is cross the ball. At least not very often. Solomon was their highest provider for crosses into the penalty area with 13, which sees him rank just 24th in the league, far behind the league’s most prolific crossers (such as Lewie Coyle, with 33).

They also show reluctance to play long balls. They attempted the least long passes in the league, just 2,704, and for long pass completions were ranked fourth-from-bottom, with 1,456.

Burnley completed 20,211 passes, the fourth-highest in the league, with a pass completion rate of 81.8%, but their numbers indicate a different passing style.

Whereas Leeds attempted long balls with just 9.9% of their attempted passes (2704/27268), Burnley went long 14% of the time (3463/24704). Their more direct passing led to Burnley only retaining possession for 56.6% of games throughout the season (versus 61.3% for Leeds) and they ranked only 5th for progressive passes, 7th for key passes, and 8th for passes into the 18-yard box.

Burnley were less inclined to keep the ball on the ground and progress through the middle of the park, and this struggle (or reluctance) to retain the ball might see them struggle to dominate midfield areas in the Premier League and to unlock Premier League defences. Having said that, their completion of 1,824 long passes was the highest in the Championship last season, so when they did go long, they were reasonably good at it. Maybe they’ll just stick to that.

Incidentally, despite Leeds’ overall lack of long ball attempts, when they did choose to go long, they were actually quite good at it too, completing 53.8% of their long passes (the highest in the league, just ahead of Burnley on 53.3%).

Sunderland were ranked 12th in the league for pass completions, with just 16,606, and an average possession of just 49.1% over the season.

They seemed happy to let the opposition have more of the ball, and when they were in possession spent less time building up from the back, choosing to go long with 15% of their pass attempts (3228/20874).

This resulted in a pass completion rate of just 79.5%.

Whereas Leeds (Rodon, Struijk, Tanak, Ampadu) and Burnley (Estève, Cullen, Egan-Riley, Roberts) each had four players within the Championship’s top 25 passers last season, Sunderland only had one: Luke O’Nien, with 2,428 passes completed.

A worrying sign for Sunderland is the potential drop-off in pass completion and possession statistics against tougher opposition in the Premier League. For instance, in the 2023–24 Championship season, Ipswich maintained 53% possession and finished 2nd. This dropped to 40.6% possession in the Premier League the following season — they struggled to score goals and keep clean sheets and were relegated in 19th place.

When you allow the opposition more of the ball, you will likely spend more time defending — and so we turn to each team’s defensive performance…

Rear Guard

Burnley get the first mention here — they had the best defensive record by some margin.

Their 16 goals against was by a long way the best in the league. In fact, it’s the best defensive record the Championship has ever seen, eclipsing the previous record of 29 goals conceded by West Brom in the 2001–02 season.

Burnley’s 16 goals conceded came from an xG-against of 39, which was second-best in the league. This suggests two things: 1) that Burnley conceded few chances, and 2) of the chances they did concede, they managed to stop a decent proportion of them.

Goalkeeper James Trafford kept 29 clean sheets during the season and was instrumental in limiting the number of goals conceded. Post-shot Expected Goals minus Goals Allowed is a good indicator of a keeper having “better luck or an above-average ability to stop shots” — Trafford scored +11.8 PSxG — GA, the third-highest ever in the Championship and second only last season to Stoke’s Johanssen, on +14.4.

In short, Burnley were rock solid at the back.

Incidentally, if you don’t concede goals in football you cannot lose, and Burnley’s tight defence enabled them to limit the losses to just two games all season, equalling the record set by Reading in the 2005–06 season.

Leeds were pretty good at the back, too.

Their 30 goals conceded was the second-best in the league and was itself the third-best ever in the Championship (behind Burnley and West Brom, as described above).

These 30 goals came from an xG against of 29.6, suggesting Leeds conceded fewer clear-cut chances than Burnley, they were just less efficient (or lucky) at stopping the final shot.

Goalkeeper Illan Meslier may not have the same shot-stopping record as Trafford, but his stopping of 9.2% of the 348 crosses he faced was 2nd best in the league (only Michael Cooper of Sheffield United performed better, with 9.6%), which surely helped limit the number of chances Leeds faced.

Incidentally, Meslier kept 21 clean sheets last season, joint second with Cooper.

Sunderland were the 4th best team defensively, conceding 44 goals.

Their 49 xG against might not be as impressive as Burnley or Leeds, but was still good enough, again, for 4th best in the league.

A key part of this defensive solidarity was Trai Hume. The Northern Ireland defender made the third-highest number of tackles overall (119), the third-highest tackles resulting in possession of the ball (74), the third-highest number of tackles in the defensive third of the pitch (63), and finished fifth-highest in combined tackles and interceptions (164).

On top of this, in the previous season (2023–24) Hume already set the Championship record for the most ever combined tackles and interceptions by one player (216), highlighting him as a consistent defensive performer.

In addition, goalkeeper Anthony Patterson kept 14 clean sheets — joint 4th in the league — so there are indicators that Sunderland are reasonably solid at the back.

So where does that leave them all?…

2025–26 Premier League Predictions

At the end of an article like this, it is customary for the writer to stick their neck on the line and make some predictions. They often turn out to be wrong.

Here goes anyway.

Leeds will stay up

I think Leeds have enough attacking threat to trouble plenty of teams in the Premier League.

They’ve demonstrated they’re capable of retaining the ball, building from the back, progressing the ball into the penalty area, creating plentiful chances, and scoring a hatful of goals.

Add to that a reasonably solid defence which will be bolstered by the recent arrival of 6'3" Slovenian centre-back Jaka Bijol from Udinese — he ranked 4th for clearances in Serie A last season (182), as well as 25th for shots blocked (18), and 27th for combined tackles and interceptions (81).

So they look strong in several departments and are evidently in the hunt for another striker to boost their forward line, with reports linking them to Fulham’s Rodrigo Muniz and Norwich’s Josh Sargent, one of the leading Championship scorers in recent seasons.

If they manage to strengthen further they’ll be capable of competing with teams in the lower third of the Premier League table.

Prediction: 14/15th

Burnley might go down

They’re solid at the back, so that will stand them in good stead.

My concern with Burnley is chance creation — they managed to outscore their relatively average xG last season, but that’s going to be tough to repeat against stronger opposition.

They need to figure out how to create more chances and find goals from different areas of the pitch. At the moment, they’re too reliant on Josh Brownhill, and a lot will depend on whether they can fend off the Premier League clubs keen to sign him (with Scott Parker reportedly desperate to keep him).

As a positive, they managed to secure the permanent signings of Jaidon Anthony and Zian Flemming, two key offensive players last season, and they’ve also added top-level experience with the recruitment of Kyle Walker.

Their defence could keep them up, but a lack of creativity going forward could send them down.

Prediction: 17/18th

Sunderland will go down

I don’t see last season’s Sunderland being able to retain possession sufficiently or create enough chances to survive in the Premier League.

Their 58 goals scored last season is comparable with Luton Town in their 2022–23 promotion season — their 57 goals scored dropped to 52 in the Premier League and they were relegated in 18th position. Likewise for Watford, who were promoted in 2020–21 having scored 63 goals, but managed just 34 in the Premier League and were relegated.

Like Burnley and Leeds, they come to the Premier League with a decent defensive record, but unless Sunderland can find a way to create and score more, they simply will not pick up enough points to survive.

On a positive note, they are spending money on new signings and will be hoping the arrival of players like winger Habib Diarra (4 goals and 5 assists in Ligue 1 last season) will improve their attacking prospects.

Someone’s got to go down, though.

Prediction: 19/20th

• 11 Moderately Interesting Statistics to Wrap Up the 2024–25 Premier League Season
• Which Countries Have the Best Men’s and Women’s Football Teams?

If you enjoyed this article and you’d like to support my work, please consider buying me a coffee via the image/link below. It would enable me to write more words on the internet and would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

Which Promoted Teams Will Survive the Premier League in 2025–26? was originally published in Sports Things on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A brief and simple analysis

The UEFA European Women’s Championship 2025 began this week, with group A in action first — the opening game saw Finland secure a 1–0 victory against Iceland, and later Norway won 2–1 against the hosts, Switzerland.

The consensus among bookmakers is that Spain, who play their first match later this evening, are favourites to win the competition, closely followed by England, Germany, France, and Sweden.

This tracks with the current FIFA women’s world rankings, with all five of those nations currently ranked in the women’s top ten.

Which got me thinking — who are currently the best and worst teams in women’s international football? And how does that compare with the men’s teams?

Firstly, how are the rankings calculated?

FIFA, the governing body for professional football, are responsible for publishing the rankings of both men's and women’s national teams.

A full explanation of their system can be found via this PDF on their website, but the gist is that FIFA add or subtract points from a team’s total points tally after each game played, based on factors such as:

• relative strength of opposition
• match importance
• expected match result
• match result

A highly ranked team beating a close rival in a crucial tournament game gains them more points than they would get from beating a lower-ranked team in a friendly match, for example.

Likewise, a lower-ranked team gains considerable points if they defeat much stronger opposition that they would usually not be expected to win against.

The FIFA Women’s Rankings

At the time of writing, in July 2025, the USA have the number one women’s football team, with 2057.19 points.

The Spanish women’s team, the top European team, are ranked second with 2034.34 points.

Third is Germany with 2030.88 points, and Brazil lie fourth with 2004.31.

You can see the current top 20 teams in the following table:

The FIFA Men’s World Rankings

Currently, the top men’s team is Argentina, with 1886.16 points.

They are followed by Spain (1854.64 points), France (1852.71 points), and England (1819.2 points).

The top 20 at the time of writing looks like this:

Overlaps and Disparities

You may immediately notice considerable overlap between the top men’s and women’s teams.

If we look at the top of each table, only five nations feature in the top 10 of both rankings: Spain, England, Brazil, Germany, and France.

This leaves five countries ranked within the women’s current top 10, but outside the men’s: USA, Japan, Sweden, Canada, and North Korea (Korea DPR).

And five countries ranked within the men’s top 10, but not the women’s: Argentina, Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, and Italy.

So, while there is considerable overlap, there is some disparity between teams having significantly stronger men’s or women’s teams.

In fact, only two nations have the same ranking for both their men’s and women’s teams: Spain (ranked 2) and Togo (ranked 120). In 124 countries, their women’s teams are ranked higher than their male counterparts, and for the remaining 86 countries, the men’s teams are better ranked than their female equivalents.

But where do the biggest disparities lie?

Stronger men’s team, weaker women’s team

Argentina are a standout here — their men’s team is ranked as the best in the world but their women’s team is only ranked 33rd.

Likewise, the Uruguay men’s team are ranked just outside the top ten, in 13th place, while the Uruguayan women are ranked 63rd, a difference of 50 places.

The biggest disparities, perhaps unsurprisingly, are in Saudi Arabia and Iraq — ranked 58 and 59 respectively in the men’s game, their women’s teams are ranked 165 and 173 in the world (disparaties of 107 and 114 places, respectively).

Strong women’s team, weaker men’s team

At the opposite end of the scale are the nations whose women’s teams perform well, but their men’s teams struggle.

The USA stand out here, ranked number 1 in the women’s rankings but only 16th in the men’s.

Larger disparity exists in countries such as Sweden (6th versus 28th), Finland (26th versus 69th), or Vietnam (37th versus 109th).

One of the largest and most surprising disparities is North Korea, whose fairly uncompetitive men’s team is ranked a lowly 118th, whilst their women’s team is one of the best in the world, currently ranked 9th.

The biggest difference is Chinese Taipei — men’s ranking 166, women’s ranking 42 — a difference of 124 places.

Click to view an interactive Tableau visualisation of the disparity data (desktop only)

Which countries have the best teams overall?

It’s clear there are nations whose men’s and women’s teams occupy similar positions in both sets of rankings.

Spain, England and Brazil have teams that both sit towards the top of the rankings.

Albania, Romania and Israel have both teams in middle-ranked positions.

Andorra, Suriname and Djibouti have teams towards the bottom end of both rankings lists.

And we’ve already covered the countries where huge variations exist (see above).

But what about combining the rankings of the respective men’s and women’s teams to give an overall average ranking by country?

Well, I’ve done just that, and currently the strongest ranked team across men’s and women’s football is Spain (ranked 2nd on average). They’re followed by England and Brazil (ranked 4.5), then Germany and France (6.5), the Netherlands and the USA (8.5), and Japan and Italy (both 11).

Argentina’s rankings of 1 and 33 see them average out to 14th position.

And countries like Colombia, Austria and South Korea make the top 20 due to fairly strong rankings for both their men’s and women’s teams.

Some notable omissions from this top 20 include:

• Croatia, whose men’s team are ranked 11th, but whose women’s team ranks just 59th (for an average of 35th place).
• Iceland — women ranked 14th, men ranked 74th (average 44th)

You can see a full table of the top 20 nations by combined/average ranking here:

So I hope that settles it — Spain officially has the overall best men’s and women’s football teams in the world.

At least for now.

Footnote: The full FIFA rankings list 210 men’s teams and only 196 women’s teams. That is because, for various cultural and sociopolitical reasons, 14 nations have a men’s team but no women’s team.

These are: Afghanistan, Brunei, Chad, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Montserrat, Oman, Qatar, San Marino, São Tomé, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.

As such, those 14 nations were excluded from any comparative analysis.

• The Best Football Players in the World According to FC25
• 11 Moderately Interesting Statistics to Wrap Up the 2024–25 Premier League Season

Which Countries Have the Best Men’s and Women’s Football Teams? was originally published in Sports Things on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Goals, fouls, passes, nationalities, salaries, and more

The 2024–25 Premier League season came to a close last week, with Liverpool deservedly crowned champions.

They were aided by a sensational Mohamed Salah, who led the league with 29 goals and 18 assists.

But there’s more to the story than just silverware and goals.

I took a nerdy deep dive into last season’s Premier League data on FBref and in this short article I’ll break down a few standout stats and trends from the season, from goal scorers to goalkeepers, player nationalities, age extremes, pass and foul stats, and even which clubs spent the most on wages.

If you’re into football, data, or just want to make sense of the season that was, you’re in the right place.

Liverpool Dominated

Almost every metric suggests Liverpool deserved to win the league this season.

Liverpool had the most shots (639), created the most goalscoring chances (xG 82.2), scored the most goals (86), completed the second-highest number of passes (18,304), and recorded the second-highest average possession (57.7%).

Defensively, they allowed the second-fewest chances (xG against 38.6) and conceded the second-fewest goals (41).

All this combined to see them win the most games (25), gain the biggest goal difference (+45) and accrue the most points (84).

And yet, their points tally of 84 is not particularly impressive. It’s only the 33rd highest in Premier League history, and in many recent seasons would only have been good enough for second or third place.

In fact, this season was only Liverpool’s fifth highest points tally in the Premier League and was almost identical to their performance the previous season — in 2023–24, they also scored 86 goals and conceded 41, however they gained two points less and finished 3rd.

This season was also nowhere near Liverpool’s best from a defensive standpoint — their 41 goals conceded is a number they’ve bettered in 17 previous Premier League seasons, including 2018–19 when they scored more (89) and conceded fewer (22) but finished second to a rampant Manchester City.

So Liverpool were really good this season, but they weren’t “great” by their own standards.

All that said, Arsenal proved in 1997–98 that you can be crowned Premier League champions with a mere 78 points. So you don’t need to be absolutely perfect to win the league — you just need to be better than everyone else.

Global Game

Players from 66 different nationalities played in the Premier League during the 2024–25 season.

264 English players played in the league (39%) versus 415 players from other countries (61%).

Brazil was the second-most represented nation in the Premier League, with 35 different Brazilian players completing a total of 44,885 minutes (close behind were France with 28 players and the Netherlands with 25 players).

The Brazilians contributed a total of 84 goals, led by Matheus Cunha (15 goals), Evanilson and Joao Pedro (both with 10), then Gabriel Martinelli and Rodrigo Muniz (both with 8).

Overall, 25 players of 17 different nationalities made it into goalscoring double figures: 5 English players, 3 Brazilians, 2 Norwegians, 2 Dutchmen, and 1 player each from Cameroon, Colombia, DR Congo, Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Senegal, Sweden, and Wales.

Old and Young

Łukasz Fabiański, who turned 40 in April, made 14 appearances in goal for West Ham and was the oldest player in the Premier League during the 2024–25 season.

The youngest goalkeepers, incidentally, were Bart Verbruggen (36 games for Brighton) and Antonín Kinský (6 games for Spurs), who are both currently 22.

The oldest outfield player and oldest scorer was Ashley Young, aged 39, who bagged 1 goal for Everton.

The youngest goalscorer was Ethan Nwaneri, who scored 4 for Arsenal and celebrated his 18th birthday in March.

The oldest players to hit double figures were Raúl Jiménez of Fulham (12 goals) and Danny Welbeck of Brighton (10 goals). They’re both 34 years old.

Shooters

Jørgen Strand Larsen of Wolves was the most accurate shooter, hitting the target with 61.1% of his 54 shots, resulting in 14 goals.

Bryan Mbuemo was arguably the most clinical forward, outperforming his season xG of 12.3 with a return of 20 goals. When he gets half a chance, he usually takes it.

In fact, his goals minus xG score of +7.7 is the fifth highest in Premier League history, bettered only by Kevin De Bruyne (in the 2021–22 season), Phil Foden (2023–24), Harry Kane (2022–23) and Mo Salah (2017–18).

xG / expected goals — You can read a full explanation of xG here, but the gist is that various metrics are used to determine the probability that a shot will result in a goal. Mbuemo scored more goals than he would statistically be expected to, given the chances that fell to him.

Ever Present

It’s not unusual for a first-choice goalkeeper to play every minute of their team’s season. In 2024–25 that was true of the keepers for Crystal Palace, Fulham, Arsenal and Everton.

However, the only outfield player to play all 3,420 minutes of Premier League football in the 2024–25 season was Brentford defender Nathan Collins.

Close behind were Bryan Mbuemo (3,414 minutes) and 32-year-old Mo Salah (3,371 minutes).

Goal Machines

This season saw five different players score twenty or more goals: Mohamed Salah (29), Alexander Isak (23), Erling Haaland (22), Bryan Mbuemo (20), and Chris Wood (20).

Two previous seasons also saw five players achieve the same feat:

• 2009–10: Didier Drogba (29), Wayne Rooney (26), Darren Bent (24), Carlos Tevez (23), Frank Lampard (22)
• 2016–17: Harry Kane (29), Romelu Lukaku (25), Alexis Sánchez (24), Sergio Agüero (20), Diego Costa (20)

In only two previous Premier League seasons have more players scored 20+ goals (6 different players in each case):

• 1993–94: Andy Cole (34), Alan Shearer (31), Chris Sutton (25), Matt Le Tissier (25), Ian Wright (23), Peter Beardsley (21)
• 1994–95: Alan Shearer (34), Robbie Fowler(25), Les Ferdinand (24), Stan Collymore (22), Andy Cole, (21), Jürgen Klinsmann (20)

However, it’s worth noting that both 1993–94 and 1994–95 were longer 42-game seasons.

Salah fell just short of the 30-mark this year. Only ten players have ever managed to score 30 or more goals since the change to a 38-game season (in 1995–96):

1. 2022–23: Erling Haaland — 36 goals
2. 2017–18: Mohammed Salah — 32 goals
3. 1995–96: Alan Shearer — 31 goals
4. 2013–14: Luis Suarez — 31 goals
5. 2007–08: Cristiano Ronaldo — 31 goals
6. 2022–23: Harry Kane — 30 goals
7. 2017–18: Harry Kane — 30 goals
8. 1999–00: Kevin Phillips — 30 goals
9. 2011–12: Robin van Persie — 30 goals
10. 2003–04: Thierry Henry — 30 goals

North London Divide

A glance at the league table would suggest second-place Arsenal performed significantly better than their local rivals Tottenham, who finished one place above the relegation zone.

However, a look at their attacking numbers suggests these teams didn’t perform much differently offensively.

Over the course of the season, Arsenal accumulated an xG of 59.9 and Spurs recorded an xG of 58.8. On paper, then, they should have scored a similar amount of goals.

Arsenal slightly outperformed, scoring 69 goals, or 1.82 goals per game, while Spurs recorded a not dissimilar 64 goals, or 1.68 goals per game.

It is defensively where these two teams are significantly separated: Arsenal recorded an xG against of 34.3 and conceded just 34 goals (0.89 per game), making them statistically the leanest defence in the league, while Spurs recorded an xG against of 63.3, shipping 65 goals (1.71 per game).

Only four teams conceded more goals than Spurs during the 2024/25 season, surely the main cause of their low standing in the league. Big Ange may have won a trophy but there is work to be done in the defensive department.

Long Pass / Short Pass

Man City passed the ball the most throughout the season, making 21,531 successful passes.

With a pass completion percentage of 88%, they averaged 567 passes per game and 61.7% possession.

At the other end of the scale, Nottingham Forest, with a pass completion rate of 75.3% only managed 10,822 complete passes, or 285 per game.

What about different types of pass?

City completed the most short passes (11,071) and medium passes (8,884), but it was Everton (1,526) and Fulham (1,504) who played the most successful long balls. By contrast, Ipswich (1,021) and Arsenal (1,031) played the fewest long passes.

Manchester City also dominate the stats for progressive passes (1,944), passes into the final third (1,685), and passes into the penalty area (440), but it is Fulham who got the ball into the box most frequently from wide positions, with 108 crosses into the penalty area.

Big Spenders

Premier League teams spent an estimated total of £1.9 billion ($2.5 billion) on player wages this season.

This equates to an average annual wage spend of just under £95 million ($128 million) per club.

At the top of this spending tree are, unsurprisingly, Manchester City (£201m per year), Manchester United (£180m per year), and Chelsea (£172m per year), while the lowest spenders are Brentford (£41m) and Ipswich (£34m).

For comparison, the total wage spend across the Big 5 European leagues is just over £5 billion, for an average wage spend of £53.5 million per club.

Real Madrid (£230 million) and Bayern Munich (£221 million) are the biggest spenders. Their wage bills, along with the two Manchester giants, rival those in North American sports — for the 2024 regular season, the NFL set the salary cap for each team at $255 million (£188 million).

If you’d like to see a visualisation of the annual wage spend by each team across the Big 5 European leagues, I’ve created this interactive Tableau dashboard (works best on desktop).

A Tale of Two Keepers

In the era of the sweeper keeper, it was Arsenal’s David Raya (66) and Newcastle’s Nick Pope (64) who completed the most defensive actions outside the penalty area (Ederson, Alisson and Robert Sanchez are also up there when calculated per 90 mins).

Nottingham Forest’s Matz Sels represents the other end of the scale. He left his box on 12 occasions this season, or just 0.32 times per 90 minutes, the least of any first-choice goalkeeper.

Raya and Ederson demonstrate an eagerness to wander from goal, both performing defensive actions more than 17 yards from their goal line, on average. Sels, by contrast, is a conservative outlier in the league, averaging defensive actions just 8.7 yards from goal.

The two keepers most successful at stopping crosses were Ipswich’s giant Bosnian, Arijanet Muric, who claimed 15.7% of the 249 crosses into his penalty area, and Raya, who claimed 13.2% of 402 crosses. At the opposite end, Sels faced the most crosses of any goalkeeper (710) and claimed just 2.7% of them.

With the ball at his feet, Tottenham’s Guglielmo Vicario favoured the shortest distribution, going long with just 10.5% of his passes from open play. Raya represents a middle ground, pumping the ball long 29.9% of the time. Who was the more risk-averse and direct goalkeeper, launching the ball up the field 68.4% of the time? You guessed it: Matz Sels.

Despite these contrasting styles, which two goalkeepers shut out the opposition the most during the 2024–25 season? David Raya and Matz Sels, both with 13 clean sheets each.

There’s more than one way to crack an egg.

Foul Play

Bournemouth committed the most fouls this season (525) and Manchester City committed the fewest (287).

Aston Villa were the most fouled team, with 499 fouls drawn, while Brentford’s players were fouled the least, just 399 times.

Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo led the league as the player with the most fouls committed (73), while Bruno Guimarães was by far the most fouled player, drawing 102 fouls (the next highest were Matheus Cunha and Anthony Gordon, both fouled 71 times).

Bournemouth’s Evanilson (5) and Brighton’s João Pedro (3) won the most penalties.

And that’s your lot! I hope you enjoyed absorbing all these stats as much as I enjoyed discovering them.

Read this next:

Which Promoted Teams Will Survive the Premier League in 2025–26?

If you enjoyed this article and you’d like to support my work, please consider buying me a coffee via the image/link below. It would enable me to write more words on the internet and would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

11 Moderately Interesting Statistics to Wrap Up the 2024–25 Premier League Season was originally published in Sports Things on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Data Analysis

Who are the best players on EA Sports FC 25?

I’m about to tell you.

I’ve put this together as part of a data analysis project which I’ll explain more about in another article, probably. For now, just know I’ve obtained a copy of the FC 25 player database from Kaggle and have analysed its contents using BigQuery / SQL / Google Sheets.

I’ve picked out the best players overall, the best players for each position, the best young players, the fastest players, and more. I present the findings to you here.

So whether you’re compiling your Ultimate Team, wondering who to sign on Career Mode, or just simply want to know who the best footballers in the world are, keep scrolling for the results.

NB. This article focuses only on male players. I will produce a separate one for the female players in due course.

Click the links in Contents to skip straight to the relevant section.

Contents

Best Outfield Players
Best Young Outfield Players
Best Goalkeepers
Best Young Goalkeepers
Best Centre Backs
Best Young Centre Backs
Best Full Backs
Best Young Full Backs
Best Midfielders
Best Young Midfielders
Best Attacking Midfielders
Best Young Attacking Midfielders
Best Wingers
Best Young Wingers
Best Strikers
Best Young Strikers
Fastest Outfield Players
Best Finishers
Best Older Players
Key (for table abbreviations)

The Best Outfield Players

I’ve separated outfield players from the goalkeepers, as they’re not really comparable in terms of skillset.

Sorting the players by Overall rating, the best players on FC 25 are:

• Erling Haaland (ST) — rated 91
• Kylian Mbappé (ST) — rated 91
• Rodri (CDM) — rated 91
• Harry Kane (ST) — rated 90
• Jude Bellingham (ST) — rated 90
• Kevin De Bruyne (CM) — rated 90
• Vinicius Junior (LW) — rated 90
• Martin Ødegaadr (CM) — rated 89
• Lautaro Martinez (ST) -rated 89
• Virgil van Dijk (CB) — rated 89
• Mohamed Salah (RW) — rated 89

The following table shows every player rated 88 or above, sorted by Overall rating, along with their other attributes.

The Best Young Outfield Players

What about the younger players only?

I searched for players aged under 25 only, and filtered the results only by those rated over 84 Overall — there is some overlap with the list above. The best young players on FC 25 are:

• Erling Haaland (ST) — age 24, rated 91
• Jude Bellingham (CAM)— age 21, rated 90
• Vinicius Junior (LW) — age 24, rated 90
• Florian Wirtz (CAM)— age 21, rated 88
• Phil Foden (RW) — age 24, rated 88
• Bukayo Saka (RW)— age 23, rated 87
• Jamal Musialia (CAM) — age 21, rated 87
• William Saliba (CB) — age 23, rated 87
• Rodrygo (RW) — age 23, rated 86
• Pedri (CM) — age 21, rated 86

See the table below for the full list of 19 players aged under 25 who are rated more than 84 Overall.

If you’re playing on career mode you might want to add some even younger prospects to your squad.

Here are the best players in FC 25 aged 21 or younger:

• Gavi (CM) — age 20, rated 83
• Savinho (LW) — age 20, rated 82
• Balde (LB) — age 20, rated 81
• Lamine Yamal (RW) — age 17, rated 81
• Warren Zaire-Emery (CM) — age 18, rated 80
• Antonio Silva (CB) — age 20, rated 79
• Joao Neves (CM) — age 19, rated 79
• Adam Wharton (CDM) — age 20, rated 78
• Ousmane Diomande (CB) — age 20, rated 78
• Girgio Scalvini (CB) — age 20, rated 78
• Arda Güler (CAM) — age 19, rated 78
• Leny Yoro (CB) — age 18, rated 78

See the table below for the full list of outfield players aged under 21 who are rated at least 77 Overall or higher.

The Best Goalkeepers (GK)

Now for the keepers. Overall, the best goalkeepers on FC 25 are:

• Alisson — rated 89
• Gianluigi Donnarumma — rated 89
• Thibaut Courtois — rated 89
• Marc-André ter Stegen — rated 89
• Gregor Kobel — rated 88
• Jan Oblak — rated 88
• Ederson — rated 88

See the table below for all the goalkeepers rated 85 Overall or above.

The Best Young Goalkeepers (GK)

Some of those keepers are pretty old (Neuer is 38!). So what about younger ones?

The best young goalkeepers on FC 25 are:

• Gianluigi Donnarumma — age 25, rated 89
• Giorgi Mamardashvili — age 23, rated 85
• Diogo Costa — age 24, rated 84
• Marco Carnesecchi — age 24, rated 82
• Andriy Lunin — age 25, rated 81

See the table below for all goalkeepers aged 25 or younger with an Overall rating above 77.

The Best Centre Backs (CB)

Let’s move on to defenders. The best centre backs on FC 25 are:

• Virgil van Dijk — rated 89
• Antonio Rüdiger — rated 88
• Rúben Dias — rated 88
• Marquinhos — rated 87
• Alessandro Bastoni— rated 87
• William Saliba — rated 87

See the table below for all the centre backs rated 85 Overall or above.

The Best Young Centre Backs (CB)

If we just look at younger centre backs, Saliba jumps to the top of the list.

The best young centre backs on FC 25 are:

• William Saliba — age 23, rated 87
• Nico Schlotterbeck — age 24, rated 85
• Micky van de Ven — age 23, rated 82
• Sven Botman — age 24, rated 82
• Odilon Kossounou — age 23, rated 81
• Marc Guéhi — age 24, rated 81
• Piero Hincapié — age 22, rated 81

See the table below for all centre backs aged under 25 with an Overall rating above 78.

The Best Full Backs (LB and RB)

Either side of your centre backs you need solid full backs. The best full backs on FC 25 are:

• Theo Hernández — rated 87
• João Cancelo — rated 86
• Trent Alexander-Arnold — rated 86
• Joshua Kimmich — rated 86
• Carvajal — rated 86
• Jules Koundé — rated 85
• Andrew Robertson — rated 85

See the table below for all the centre backs rated 84 Overall or above.

The Best Young Full Backs (LB and RB)

Again, some of those full backs are into their thirties, so if you’re looking for someone younger, these are the top young full backs on FC 25:

• Nuno Mendes — age 22, rated 83
• Joško Gvardiol — age 22, rated 83
• Destiny Udogie — age 21, rated 82
• Alphonso Davies — age 23, rated 82
• Reece James. -age 24, rated 82
• Balde — age 20, rated 81
• Ferdi Kadıoğlu — age 24, rated 81

See the table below for all full backs aged under 25 with an Overall rating above 78.

The Best Midfielders (CM and CDM)

Moving into midfield, let’s first look at the central and defensive midfielders. The best midfielders on FC 25 are:

• Rodri — rated 91
• Kevin De Bruyne — rated 90
• Martin Ødegaard — rated 89
• Frederico Valverde — rated 88
• Bernado Silva — rated 88

See the table below for all the central midfielders rated 85 Overall or above.

The Best Young Midfielders (CM and CDM)

If you want someone younger running the centre of the park, the best young central midfielders on FC 25 are:

• Pedri — age 21, rated 86
• Sandro Tonali — age 24, rated 85
• Aurélien Tchouaméni — age 24, rated 85
• Vitinha — age 24, rated 85
• Eduardo Camavinga — age 21, rated 83

See the table below for all central midfielders aged under 25 with an Overall rating of 80 or higher.

The Best Attacking Midfielders (CAM)

Every top team needs an elite creative outlet. The best attacking midfielders on FC 25 are:

• Jude Bellingham — rated 90
• Florian Wirtz — rated 88
• Jamal Musiala — rated 87
• Bruno Fernandes — rated 87
• Paul Dybala — rated 87
• James Maddison — rated 85
• Julian Brandt — rated 85

See the table below for all the central midfielders rated above 80 Overall.

The Best Young Attacking Midfielders (CAM)

The above are quite a young bunch anyway, so the top three remain the same, but let’s get rid of those 30-year-olds. The best young attacking midfielders on FC 25 are:

• Jude Bellingham —age 21, rated 90
• Florian Wirtz — age 21, rated 88
• Jamal Musiala — age 21, rated 87
• Xavi Simons — age 21, rated 83
• Sancet — age 24, rated 82
• Dominik Szoboszlai — age 23, rated 81

See the table below for all young attacking midfielders aged under 25 with an Overall rating above 78.

The Best Wingers (RM, LM, RW, LW)

Moving out to the wings, these are the best wingers on FC 25:

• Vinicius Junior — rated 90
• Mohamed Salah — rated 89
• Phil Foden — rated 88
• Lionel Messi — rated 88
• Neymar — rated 87
• Bukayo Saka — rated 87

See the table below for all the wide midfielders and wingers rated above 80 Overall.

The Best Young Wingers (RM, LM, RW, LW)

If it’s younger wide men you’re after, the best young wingers on FC 25 are:

• Vinicius Junior — age 24, rated 90
• Phil Foden — age 24, rated 88
• Bukayo Saka — age 23, rated 87
• Rodrygo — age 23, rated 86
• Khvicha Kvaratskhelia — age 23, rated 85
• Gabriel Martinelli — age 23, rated 83

See the table below for all young attacking midfielders aged under 25 with an Overall rating above 78.

The Best Strikers (ST)

If you want someone world class up top, the best strikers on FC 25 are, unsurprisingly:

• Erling Haaland — rated 91
• Kylian Mbappé — rated 91
• Harry Kane — rated 90
• Lautaro Martinez — rated 89
• Robert Lewandowski — rated 88
• Antoine Griezmann — rated 88
• Heung Min Son — rated 87
• Victor Osimhen — rated 87

See the table below for all the wide midfielders and wingers rated above 83 Overall.

The Best Young Strikers (ST)

Some of those strikers are ancient — if you’re playing on career mode you might not necessarily want to sign a 39-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo or 36-year-old Karim Benzema. So what about younger strikers?

The best young strikers on FC 25 are:

• Erling Haaland — age 24, rated 91
• Alexander Isak — age 24, rated 85
• Loïs Openda — age 24, rated 85
• Dušan Vlahović — age 24, rated 84
• Julián Álvarez — age 24, rated 84
• Victor Boniface — age 23, rated 82
• Jonathan David — age 24, rated 81
• Evanilson — age 24, rated 80

See the table below for all young strikers aged under 25 with an Overall rating above 78.

The Fastest Outfield Players

Forget about positions, what about the fastest players?

I initially searched solely for the players with the highest Pace attribute, but this returned several fast players who had fairly average Overall ratings, such as Yankuba Minteh (Pace 95, Overall 74) and Nestory Irankunda (Pace 94, Overall 68).

I only want good fast players.

So instead I searched only for players with a Pace rating of above 90 and an Overall rating of above 80. This should pick out only the best fast players on FC 25. 17 players fit this criteria — at the top of the list were:

• Kylian Mbappé (ST) — Pace 97, Overall 91
• Moussa Diaby (RM)— Pace 95, Overall 83
• Theo Hernandez (LB)— Pace 95, Overall 87
• Vinicius Jr (LW) — Pace 95, Overall 90
• Alphonso Davies (LB) — Pace 95, Overall 82
• Rafael Leao (LW) — Pace 94, Overall 86
• Inaki Williams (RM) — Pace 94, Overall 82
• Frederico Chiesa (RW) — Pace 93, Overall 84
• Jeremie Frimpong (RM) — Pace 93, Overall 84
• Nico Williams (LM) — Pace 93, Overall 85

You can see the rest of the 17 in the table below:

The Best Finishers

If you just want someone who will stick the ball in the back of the net at every opportunity, the top 10 best finishers on FC 25 are, predictably:

• Erling Haaland (ST) — Finishing 96
• Harry Kane (ST) — Finishing 95
• Kylian Mbappé (ST) — Finishing 94
• Lautaro Martinez (ST) — Finishing 93
• Antoine Griezmann (ST) — Finishing 90
• Mohamed Salah (RW) — Finishing 90
• Iago Aspas (ST) — Finishing 90
• Heung Min Son (ST) — Finishing 90
• Robert Lewandowski (ST) — Finishing 90
• Jude Bellingham (CAM) — Finishing 90

You know the drill by now — see the table for the full list of players rated above 80 Overall with a Finishing attribute above 85.

The Best Older Players

And, lastly, if you’re looking to add some experience to your squad, maybe you can pick up an older player on the cheap. There are plenty of highly-rated older players still with something to offer.

The best older players on FC 25 are:

• Lionel Messi (RW) — age 37, rated 88
• Robert Lewandowski (ST) — age 36, rated 88
• Luka Modríc (CM) — age 39, rated 86
• Cristiano Ronaldo (ST) — age 39, rated 86
• Manuel Neuer (GK) — age 38, rated 86
• Karim Benzema (ST) — age 36, rated 86
• Iago Aspas (ST) — age 37, rated 84
• Francesco Acerbi (CB) — age 36, rated 84
• Oliver Giroud (ST) — age 37, rated 83
• Ángel Di Maria (RM) — age 36, rated 83

See the table below for all players aged over 35 who still maintain an Overall rating above 80.

Key (for table abbreviations)

You’ll see in the tables above I’ve included player attributes with abbreviated column headings (for neatness). The key is as follows:

Pos — Position

OVR — Overall

PAC — Pace

SHO — Shooting

PAS — Passing

DRI — Dribbling

DEF — Defending

PHY — Physical

Within the game’s database, these high-level attributes are a composite of several more specific attributes. For example, Pace includes other attributes like Acceleration and Sprint Speed, while Physical includes Strength, Agility and Balance.

I’ve chosen not to include every single one of these attributes as it would look too cumbersome on screen.

And there you have it — all the best players in the FC25 database.

If there are any specific categories you’d like me to add, like left-footed Brazilian goalkeepers, leave a comment and I’ll update this article (or write a new one if I uncover masses of new information).

11 Moderately Interesting Statistics to Wrap Up the 2024–25 Premier League Season

The Best Football Players in the World According to FC25 was originally published in Sports Things on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.