We live in aggregates because we have to. At least, that's how the Premier League awards its champion. You play 38 games, one home and away against everyone, and whoever accrues the best combination of three-point wins and one-point draws gets to lift the trophy. If, somehow, there's still a tie, then we look to another aggregate: the differential between goals scored and conceded across those 38 games.
Unlike in tournament-based competitions, the best team -- on aggregate, by points won -- always wins the league.
Of course, in a single moment, no team is exactly its aggregate. No, each team is performing somewhere along the spectrum of matches -- good, bad, or average -- that add up to make its aggregate.
Take Liverpool's match with Wolves last weekend. At halftime, the league leaders were on pace to win 4-0 -- well ahead of their seasonlong aggregate of plus-1.3 per game. Then, in the second half, they got outshot 10-0 and were outscored 1-0. Two vastly different halves add up to a performance well below their 25-game aggregate.
At this point in the season, the league table and each team's goal differential do a pretty good job of summarizing the average performance level of all 20 teams in England's top flight. But it doesn't really tell you anything about how they got there -- including the top end of what teams have proven capable of this season.
Today, we're going to move beyond the aggregates. To do so, we've ranked all 20 Premier League teams, in order, by how good their best game was, which in turn tells us how high each team's ceiling is.