Eight months is a long time. When the Premier League's season began on Aug. 16, Manchester City's Rodri had yet to tear his ACL, Barcelona's Raphinha was still seen as a relatively disappointing signing (as opposed to a potential 2025 Ballon d'Or winner), Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" was about three months old, and the U.S. presidential election was still nearly three months away.
That feels like a millennium ago, but the single soccer season that has played out in that time has offered us countless plot twists, from Paris Saint-Germain's disappointing Champions League start, to Manchester City's early-season collapse, to Liverpool's winter dominance, to PSG's spring surge and so on. The teams that were great months ago aren't necessarily the ones that are great now.
So, with the season entering its home stretch -- the Champions League semifinals will be set after Wednesday, and both the Premier League's title and relegation races are about done already -- let's look at the most in-form teams of the moment.
Below are the top 15 teams in what I'm calling "adjusted goal differential" in all competitions since Feb. 16, exactly two months ago. Some of these teams still have lots to play for, others are simply playing out the string, and the amount of good fortune they're enjoying has varied significantly. Regardless, they're all playing pretty well at the moment.
What I'm calling "Adjusted Goal Differential" is a mix of 30% goal differential and 70% xG differential in 11v11 situations. Because of the inherent randomness of goals, incorporating both xG and actual goals is a good way of measuring shot quality while still accounting for finishing skill.
The list below isn't opponent-adjusted, and two months isn't a long enough time to generate a true, predictive sample. But a list such as this can still tell us who is in the best raw form right now. (It also pretty accurately tells us who the best team in Europe is at the moment. It's hard to dispute PSG's and their current levels of awesomeness, even if things got a little wobbly at Aston Villa.)