In the last article of this series it was once again apparent that Manchester City were clear in front in terms of shot efficiency in the Premier League but after another raft of midweek action has this made any change to the raft of charts and data available.

Here is last week’s data article – actually that should be midweek’s die to the fixtures coming thick and fast but now let’s take a look at this as always thanks to whoscored.com for all the necessary data.

Here is the Premier League league table after 14 weeks while also working out the amount of total shots taken.

and let’s now take a look at how these teams rank in order of Premier League shot efficiency

But as we know by now we always prefer that data in a graph, so it here is for you

And once again it is Manchester City who come out on top, although that gap has been diminished slightly after they only scored two goals in midweek while their cross town rivals United scored four. There was a 1.5 shot gap between the two clubs but now it is down to 0.7.

Leicester and Watford have moved above Chelsea in the pecking order, again the former two scoring more than the latter in midweek both the Foxes and the Hornets scored twice while Antonio Conte’s men had to make do with just a solitary goal against Swansea.

Talking of Swansea they draw a blank against the champions and their plight along with Crystal Palace worsened a few days ago. That said Palace seem to be in something of an upward trajectory while Swansea are the opposite you do wonder if this week could see the Swans hit rock bottom for the first time this season.

Tottenham may well feel like that they have rock bottom at present after three games without a win and they have dropped to 13th in the goal efficiency charts, now you cannot criticise them for creating chances they are the second highest creators in the league but at the same time they are only the seventh highest league goal scorers.

Now we can take a look at the variance between shot efficiency from week 13 to week 14

As you can see the big winners are Everton whose four goal tally against West Ham saw them shave an average of two shots per goal before breaching the opposition’s net. While Arsenal’s five goal haul sees them shave 0.9 shots per goal before scoring.

The big losers are Newcastle and Crystal Palace this week, the latter drawing a blank against Brighton at The AMEX sees them still sit bottom of both the Premier League table and the shot efficiency rankings. The four least efficient teams in the Premier League all saw their efficiency rating worsen in midweek.

Tottenham’s slip down the rankings also saw them now require an extra 0.3 shots per goal, standing at 11.3 goals. They have scored half the goals of Manchester City and require twice as many shots before getting the better of the opposition.

But let’s take a look at how the Premier League would be ranked if it was based on just shots taken

As you can see Tottenham are very close to being the team which has the most shots in the Premier League, they are just three behind Liverpool. So there is no question of a lack of creativity but a lack of ruthlessness certainly, add to the fact that Harry Kane has scored 43% of their goals and you have to be asking questions of the supporting cast

The gap however has closed between themselves and Manchester City with just two shots separating them while there are just five shots separating the top three clubs in this list, truth be told with Manchester City playing West Ham tomorrow and the fact that they have the worst defence in the Premier League right now then there is no reason why they won’t move to the top of that list by the end of the weekend.

Swansea are still at the bottom of the list in terms of chances created and not only that they are only averaging 0.5 goals per game. When they need 16 chances per goal but are only creating 8 chances per game then the maths say it all.

Let’s now take a look at how the league table compares with the shot efficiency ranking

The big winners are West Brom who are seven places better off their current league standing, 17th in the league but also the 10th most efficient team in the Premier League this season. while there are also sizeable variances for both Leicester and Everton with them both six places higher than their league placing would suggest.

Again it is the teams in the bottom half of the table who seem to be gaining the most, again this can only point to a poor defence something you can certainly point at with the top six teams in that list even if we do allow for the fact that Leicester and Watord are in the top half of the table.

West Brom seem to be efficient but that is probably down to the fact that they are creating so few chances, they have created the second lowest in the Premier League this season while not forgetting at time of writing they have not won any of their last 12 matches.

While the top two and the bottom two teams in the Premier League are not only unchanged but there is no difference between the two metrics, which comes as no real surprise but you do need to give special mention to Crystal Palace who are creating a fair amount of chances this season. However this is not reflected in terms of goals.

Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool are all negative variances this week but the simple logic here is that they are creating chances by the bucketload which is certainly the case for Tottenham who are six places worse off then their league placing after Week 14.

The three parameters are split as such:

8 Positive
4 Neutral
8 Negative

Giving us an even split between the winners and losers in Week 14

Let’s see how the rankings have changed week on week as we find out who are the biggest movers and shakers

Everton and Bournemouth are the big winners as their positional variance has moved up three places while six other Premier League teams have also improved from the last six fixtures. While six teams have seen their record worsen as Stoke are the big losers this time around.

I’ll return later in the week with the offering from Week 15 as I analyse what changes would have come about after all the weekend’s Premier League action. The joys of being a Freelance Football Statistician.

I hope this was of interest to you and if you have any football data work available then please contact me at realfootballmanwordpress@gmail.com as I am always looking to undertake additional projects to the ones I already have. Thanks, Dan.