Goals are up in the Premier League this season, but the finishing has not kept pace with the chances being created. The 2026-27 campaign is averaging 2.70 non-penalty goals per game, a higher rate than last season and two of the four campaigns before it. Yet matches have averaged 2.88 non-penalty expected goals, the second-highest figure of the past six seasons, meaning a meaningful slice of the entertainment has been left on the table.
Had the 20 clubs converted at the par rate, there would have been almost two extra goals every week. Small as that sounds, it has had a visible effect on results: the proportion of drawn games is now higher than in any previous Premier League season, and some of those stalemates might have been settled had the finishing been sharper.
The waste has been widespread. Fourteen clubs have scored fewer goals than expected — whether or not penalties are included — up from 10 last season. Eight teams sit within a goal of their underlying numbers and could see their fortunes turn quickly, but the remaining 12 split 8-4 towards the underachievers. It is not only the season-long numbers that are slipping. Across the first five match weeks there were 24 instances of a team scoring at least one goal fewer than their xG implied, twice as many as in the opening 50 games of last season.
Chance quality does not appear to be the culprit, with the expected goals per non-penalty shot average barely moving. Nor has the volume of box touches dropped dramatically at first glance, with a Premier League team averaging 24.8 touches in the opposition box per game, down just 0.6 on last season. The team-by-team breakdown is more revealing. Four of last season’s top five are taking fewer touches in the box, with Aston Villa and Liverpool each having lost around a third of their average.
Manchester United are the one member of that quintet to have increased their box touches, but the context matters: they have played only one side that finished in the top 10 last season, and five of their eight goals came against Championship runners-up Ipswich. United top the league for non-penalty shots yet are joint-second bottom for the average expected goal value of those efforts. Bryan Mbeumo, their leading player for non-penalty xG, is one of 10 players to have scored at least one goal fewer than his underlying numbers suggest; he also underachieved by 1.19 last season.
A wider pattern is the concentration of chances. The top player for expected goals at almost every Premier League club is taking a bigger share of his team’s xG than last season — not necessarily alarming in itself, since those figures should settle as playing time and opportunities are shared around the squad. But the most involved players may be part of the explanation for the dip: the leading xG players at each club have collectively scored 6.8 non-penalty goals fewer than expected, almost 40% of the division’s entire shortfall, from just 20 players.
Some of those burdens are striking. Thierno Barry has been the player taking the chance for 49.4% of Everton’s non-penalty expected goals, up from 17.7% last season, a huge increase in responsibility for a relatively young player who has scored twice from chances valued at 3.5 xG. Alexander Isak has seen an even greater leap in his share of team expected goals, though injuries meant he did not feature often last season; he remains relatively new in terms of minutes at Liverpool, where — as at more than half of Premier League clubs — he is playing under a new manager. Isak’s replacement at Newcastle, Yoanne Wissa, underperformed against xG by more than two goals last season, as did Marcus Tavernier at Bournemouth.
At Tottenham the situation is stark in a different way: their leading player for non-penalty expected goals is centre-back Jan Paul van Hecke. Elsewhere, the top xG players at Fulham (Gonzalo García) and Ipswich (Emersonn) are 22 years old and new to English football, while Hull’s Oli McBurnie has never scored more than six goals in a Premier League campaign. Erling Haaland remains a reliable presence in the xG-heavy frontman stakes, though the situation at Manchester City may affect his form.
Leaning on players who can be forgiven for underperforming could prove to be a small-sample statistical quirk that is quickly corrected. Until it is, the goal rate reaching the expected goal level is not something to bank on in the Premier League.