Four shots! Manchester City took four shots in Sunday's 1-0 loss to Arsenal. It was the club's smallest number of attempts in the entire 425-match Pep Guardiola era. Granted, they generated 0.5 xG from those four, compared to the 0.4 Arsenal generated from 12 shots, and they lost only because of a goal vigorously deflected off of defender Nathan Aké's face. But it was still a dire total, and there were two more shots from defenders (Ake and Josko Gvardiol each had one) than from Erling Haaland (zero).
It was also City's second loss in a row in league play and third in four matches overall. They hadn't dropped two straight in the Premier League since a Crystal Palace-Leicester City double in 2018. The losses have dropped City to third place in the Premier League, behind both Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur.
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Meanwhile, Bayer Leverkusen and VfB Stuttgart are leading Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga. Girona is second in LaLiga, ahead of both Atletico Madrid and Barcelona. Defending Serie A champ Napoli is fifth in Italy, already six points behind AC Milan and trailing Fiorentina to boot. And in France, PSG has had to rally just to get to third place with the same number of points as Brest and fewer than both Monaco and Nice.
What on earth is going on here? Are the meek inheriting soccer's earth? Has everyone caught up to the possession-dominant style almost all of the sport's financial heavyweights have deployed for the last decade?
Or is it just early? Yeah, it's probably just early.
We're approaching the quarter pole of the long 2023-24 season in European soccer, and while there are plenty of intriguing trends and oddities, the results haven't strayed too far from the norm. Manchester City is just two points behind Arsenal -- they trailed the Gunners by eight in mid-January last season and still comfortably reeled them in -- and Bayern is actually well ahead of where they were at this point last season. I cannot confirm that we won't end up seeing an uprising from the aforementioned meek, but it's not something we can confidently predict.
Below are some things we can confirm. Every season has its own unique flavor profile even if most of the champs remain the same, and here's what's been making 2023-24 interesting.
Scoring is up
Within Europe's Big Five leagues, teams have gone from scoring 1.38 goals per match in 2022-23 to 1.48 thus far in 2023-24, a 7.2% increase. A slight uptick in penalties has played a role in that, but even if you filter them out, you're still looking at a 6.3% increase in non-penalty goals (from 1.26 to 1.34).
Of the Big Five, scoring has inched up in two leagues and skyrocketed in two others.
In Italy's Serie A, nothing has changed. Teams averaged 1.17 non-penalty goals from 12.6 shots worth 1.17 xG per game in 2022-23; this season: 1.17 NPG from 12.2 shots worth 1.07 xG. There are quite a few penalties to go around in Italy, and Inter (2.6), Roma (2.4), Fiorentina (2.3), Napoli (2.1) and AC Milan (2.0) are all averaging two or more goals per match. But eight of 20 clubs are averaging one or fewer, too. In the birthplace of catenaccio (door-bolt defense), this just feels right.
England's Premier League was the second-most prolific of the Big Five last year and remains so. In 2022-23, teams averaged 1.33 non-penalty goals from 12.5 shots worth 1.35 xG per match; this year the numbers are 1.38 goals (up 3.8%) from 13.5 shots (up 8.1%) worth 1.44 xG (up 6.7%). Finishing and shot quality haven't really improved, but teams are attempting more shots, and that's something I never want to discourage.
Julien Laurens sounds off on Manchester United after their Champions League defeat to Galatasaray.
In France's Ligue 1, non-penalty goals have increased 4.8% from 1.25 to 1.31 with a similar increase in shots (up 3.6% from 12.1 to 12.5) but a decrease in shot quality -- xG averages have slipped from 1.28 to 1.24 (down 3.1%). There are basically four teams attempting good shots (Strasbourg, Reims, PSG and Montpellier are between 0.13 and 0.14 xG per shot), and Monaco's got a good quality-and-quantity mix. Otherwise, nothing great.
In Spain's LaLiga, goals have lurched upward, and I'm not totally sure why. Non-penalty shot attempts are up 2.4% (from 12.2 to 12.5), and the xG generated from them is up 3.3% (1.20 to 1.24). Non-penalty goals, however, are up 14.8%, from a lowest-in-the-Big-Five 1.15 to 1.32.
Atletico (2.5), Barca (2.3), Real Madrid (2.2) and Girona (2.1) are all over two goals per game, and four others are at 1.6 or higher and only four at 1.0 or lower. This is spectacularly prolific for LaLiga, and it seems to be driven at least in part by some unsustainably fantastic finishing. Real Madrid's Jude Bellingham has scored eight goals from shots worth 4.0 xG, while Real Sociedad's Takefusa Kubo (five goals from shots worth 1.3 xG), Granada's Bryan Zaragoza (five from 2.4), Mallorca's Abdón Prats (four from 1.3) and even Álvaro Morata (five from 3.2), an historically average finisher, have also been in the zone.
Of course, the moment goals become a topic of conversation, one league in particular perks up, and Germany's Bundesliga is even more prolific than usual. Teams are attempting 7.6% more non-penalty shots (from 12.6 to 13.5) worth 6.8% more xG (1.33 to 1.42) and scoring 10.3% more from them (1.45 to 1.60). Three teams are averaging more than three goals per match (Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen and VfB Stuttgart), and three more are over two (Borussia Dortmund, Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig). That more than offsets the effects of having five teams at one or lower.
With shot volume mostly rising, some of these increases should be pretty sustainable (and since goals are fun, hooray for that). But players like Bellingham, Kubo and Stuttgart's Serhou Guirassy (13 goals from 31 shots worth 7.2 xG) are likely to come back to earth at least a little bit, no matter how cool it would be if they didn't.
The dead weight is deader
At this point last season, the 12 teams with the worst point totals in the Big Five leagues were averaging 0.43 points per game. This season's bottom 12 are at 0.33. England's three promoted teams -- Luton Town, Burnley and Sheffield United -- have generated 13 points from a combined 24 matches, and another promoted team, Italy's Cagliari, has two points from eight.
Most of the rest of the teams in this batch were pretty poor last year, too (AFC Bournemouth, Empoli, Salernitana, Almeria), but Germany's Mainz and Koln have fallen from approximately mid-table to a combined three points in 14 matches, and two French teams have plummeted. Clermont Foot finished eighth in Ligue 1 last season and didn't lose anyone to big-money transfers, but they have thus far pulled in just two points from eight matches. Their xG differential (-0.6 per match) isn't good, but it's still only seventh-worst in the league, so perhaps a bit of a rebound is coming.
Lyon, on the other hand, is hopeless at the moment. They are awash in money issues and suffering spending restrictions, and they lost three players for a combined €90 million in transfers -- winger Bradley Barcola (PSG), attacking midfielder Romain Faivre (Bournemouth), center-back Castello Lukeba (RB Leipzig) -- plus Houssem Aouar and veterans like Thiago Mendes, Karl Toko Ekambi and Moussa Dembélé.
From the lineup that beat Manchester City in the 2020 Champions League quarterfinals -- a thing that did actually happen! -- only goalkeeper Anthony Lopes and midfielder Maxence Caqueret remain, and none of this year's (cheap) summer additions have made a huge difference yet.
The result: rock bottom. At least, they hope it's rock bottom.
Lyon has three points from eight matches. They're last in the league in goals scored, second-to-last in goals allowed and last in both goal differential and xG differential. They're getting no useful width from their attackers, and they have no one who can win a duel (their 43% ground-duel win rate is last in the league). They've given up 10 goals from high turnovers, they've been outscored 6-1 in what I call transition possessions*, and when they finally scored multiple goals for the first time all season against Lorient on Sunday, they also allowed three in a 3-3 draw.
It almost goes without saying that they've already made a managerial change (from Laurent Blanc to Fabio Grosso), and at this rate they'll make a couple more by season's end.
If there's good news here, it's that of last year's bottom 12 teams at this point in the season, only five ended up relegated. There was plenty of time to rally, and plenty did so -- even Bochum, which began the year with one point in eight matches. We'll see if that remains the case this season.
* Transition possessions: possessions that start outside the attacking third and last 20 or fewer seconds.
Up is down in Germany and France
Even if most of the great teams in a given league don't change from year to year, every season features surprising surges and surprising stumbles. In England, Tottenham Hotspur are currently earning nearly a point more per match (2.5) than they did last season (1.6) and West Ham (+0.7) has improved by a similar amount, while Bournemouth (-0.7) and Brentford (-0.7) are laboring.
In Italy, AC Milan (+0.8) and Fiorentina (+0.7) are off to bright starts, while Lazio (-0.7), Salernitana (-0.7) and defending Scudetto winner Napoli (-0.6) are not. In Spain, Girona (+1.2) is flying, and Villarreal (-0.8) and Almeria (-0.8) are sinking.
That said, things are particularly topsy-turvy in France and Germany. Only Brest (+0.7) is significantly overachieving last year's pace in Ligue 1, but three teams -- Lens (-1.2), Lyon (-1.3) and Clermont (-1.3) -- are suffering the biggest collapses in the Big Five. And in the Bundesliga, a full one-third of the league is earning either a point more or a point less per match.
Stuttgart, one of the most unlucky teams in the Big Five last year from an xG perspective, has flipped all the way around on that scale, overachieving their xG differential by 0.8 goals per match (thanks primarily to Guirassy) and earning 1.6 more points per game than they did last season. That somehow overshadows another couple of big turnarounds, that of league leader Bayer Leverkusen (+1.2) and Hoffenheim (+1.1).
On the other end, Koln (-1.1), Mainz (-1.1) and Union Berlin (-1.0) have all found life much more difficult. Union Berlin overachieved its xG differential by 0.5 goals per match last season on the way to a fourth-place finish and Champions League berth in 2022-23; this year they're underachieving that differential by 0.4.
Comeuppance always arrives, even if you don't know when.
Bayern is better with Harry Kane (and Spurs are better without him)
To me, one of the most frustrating aspects of Tottenham Hotspur's yearslong resistance to overtures for star Kane -- most notably, when Manchester City was supposedly ready to offer €150 million in 2021 -- was that Spurs were quite obviously underachieving with Kane.
From 2019-20 through 2022-23, they finished higher than sixth in the Premier League just once. They could have used the money to build the depth and variety of options the squad clearly needed. I understand the clutch of loyalty and the desire to see Kane break career scoring records in a Tottenham shirt, but squad building seemed to necessitate a deal, and the club virulently refused even when Kane himself seemed to be pushing for a move (albeit in his typical, painfully polite way).
With his contract approaching expiration, chairman Daniel Levy finally began to appear open to a deal, and after a lengthy negotiation with Bayern, Kane moved to Munich in mid-August. It has worked out well for everyone.
Bayern are averaging 2.43 points per game thus far -- an 83-point pace that will win the Bundesliga pretty much any season (even if Leverkusen and Stuttgart are topping that pace at the moment) -- and have improved their scoring output from 2.71 goals per match a year ago back to 3.29. They ranked first in the league in averaging 0.19 shots per possession last season, but they've ramped that up to 0.23, and they've jumped from eighth to second in xG per shot (0.14) as well.
Even though they're attempting fewer shots in the box (down from 53% of shots to 50%), 14.0% of their shots are worth at least 0.3 xG, up from 9.4% last season. Verdict: win.
Kane himself is on pace for 39 goals and 19 assists in league play. With Spurs, he peaked at 30 goals in 2017-18 and 2022-23, and he hit double-digit assists once, with 14 in 2020-21. He's certainly benefiting from the super-charged scoring environment of the Bundesliga, not to mention talented and in-form teammates like Leroy Sané (six goals and 15 chances created), Kingsley Coman (two goals and one assist from 14 chances), Joshua Kimmich (three assists from 22 chances) and Alphonso Davies (three assists from 15 chances). Verdict: win.
Incredibly, Spurs are averaging more points per game than even Bayern at the moment. New manager Ange Postecoglu has installed a high-intensity, heavy-pressing identity that has clicked beautifully, and while the club didn't make a ton of moves after the Kane sale, previously acquired newcomers like attacking midfielder James Maddison, center-back Micky van de Ven and goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario are thriving alongside known entities like Son Heung-min. Together, they're tied for fourth in scoring (2.25 goals per match) and second in shots per possession (second).
It's scary to lose a player you've built so much of your attack around, but it's also not necessarily healthy to build so much of your attack around one player! They're probably overachieving a bit at the moment, but still ... verdict: win.
Turkish teams are thriving
The rest of this piece has centered around the Big Five, but let's cast our gaze at the continent as a whole for a moment. And let's use Elo ratings to do so.
I love the ratings at EloFootball.com for a couple of different reasons. Elo ratings are generally easy to explain -- if you beat a team, you take some of their points (a few if you rank higher than them, a lot if you rank lower) -- and looking at who's taking points from whom is a nice way of seeing who's defying (or underachieving) expectations in UEFA competitions.
Among the top 10 countries in Europe, per EloFootball, here are the countries who have taken or lost the most points in UEFA competitions thus far.
Turkey (+93 points)
Spain (+73)
Italy (+40)
Belgium (+39)
France (+24)
England (-5)
Portugal (-10)
Netherlands (-11)
Germany (-38)
Apparently going pedal-to-the-metal in the scoring department has not helped Germany in continental play -- the Bundesliga's four UCL teams have taken just 10 points from eight matches (Union Berlin's Champions League loss to Braga was particularly costly), and Freiburg lost at home to West Ham in a heavily-weighted Europa League matchup. But Germany hasn't lost nearly as much as Turkey and Spain have gained.
For LaLiga, Sevilla's Super Cup draw with Manchester City, Real Madrid's 3-2 win over Napoli, Barcelona's 1-0 win over Porto and Real Sociedad's 2-0 win over Salzburg were all major point-getters, enough to offset a couple of poor Europa League results (Villarreal losing 2-0 to Panathinaikos, Real Betis losing 1-0 to Rangers).
Meanwhile, Fenerbahce and Besiktas have been carrying the banner well for the Turkish Super Lig. Galatasaray's 3-2 upset of Manchester United in the Champions League resulted in a huge trade of points, as did their qualification wins over Molde, Fenerbahce's Conference league qualification wins over Switzerland's FC Twente and both clubs' qualification wins over Slovenian teams Olimpija Ljubljana and Maribor.
This makes sense, of course. Galatasaray boasts veterans like scorers Mauro Icardi and Wilfried Zaha, plus full-back Angeliño, midfielder Tanguy Ndombele and the currently injured Hakim Ziyech. Younger players like Sacha Boey and Tete have been excellent in the Champions League, too.
And this summer Fenerbahce added not only veterans like Edin Dzeko and Fred but also younger bright spots like attacking midfielder Sebastian Szymanski. We're used to these teams featuring a number of That Guys (as in, "oh right, I remember that guy"), but both rosters are particularly impressive this year. That's also reflected in league play, where they've dropped a combined two points in 16 matches.
In all, from the middleweight crowd, Turkey, Denmark (+49) and Greece (+43) have all made lovely gains early in the European season, while Norway (-48), Sweden (-47) and Switzerland (-46) have not. We'll check in on the totals again at the end of the group stages.