Oh it’s great to have the English Premier League back! We’re only two weeks into the league and we’ve already had some really exciting games played.

In this week’s post, we’re going to focus on everything to do with passing. In the first two games, there have been 19,719 attempted passes across all teams. Of those attempted passes, 16,205 have been completed successfully, putting the league at an 82% average completion rate.

For reference, there were 314,075 completed passes in the 2023-2024 Premier League season, out of a total of 389,058 attempted passes across all teams. So as it stands right now, the league as a whole is approximately 1% more accurate.

Pass Length

A big component to determine the accuracy of passes, measured by the completion percentage, is the distance of the pass attempted. As noted in our first post of the season (The English Premier League is Back!), passes can be categorized as short, medium, or long.

Type	Length
Short	Between 5 and 15 yards
Medium	Between 15 and 30 yards
Long	Longer than 30 yards

As expected, short passes have a greater probability of being completed. Short passes have less chances of being intercepted, being hit poorly, or being impacted externally by weather, such as rain or wind.

While pass length all depends on a team’s playing style, typically those that complete a higher proportion of their passes as short or medium length, end up higher up the league table. Teams in the bottom half of the table, and more specifically, teams fighting the relegation battle are often pegged back and when they do get the ball, are quick to get it up the field and away from their goal.

With that being said, there are always outliers. But as the season progress and more games are played, more defined patterns will begin to emerge.

However, when looking at the proportion of attempted passes for each team over the first two games, there are already some trends emerging. As seen in the graph below, there are some definitive differences between teams that attempt higher proportions of short vs. long passes.

For instance, Everton has attempted the most long passes, with 25% of all passes attempted being greater than 30 yards. Conversely, Southampton and Manchester City are hovering around the 7% mark for attempted passes that were 30+ yards.

Most teams hover around 35%-45% of attempted passes being that medium distance of between 15-30 yards. However, patterns again start to emerge when looking at the short distance. 53% of all of Manchester City’s passes were 15 yards or less, where as teams like Brentford, Everton and Bournemouth are all below 40%.

Progressive Pass Distance

Other metrics for passing include the total distance passed, as well as the total progressive distance passed.

Progressive Distance Passed – completed passes that have travelled towards the opponents goal.

When looking at the total distance passed, those teams with the higher percentage of possession top this chart. Starting with Manchester City, they have passed for a total distance of 19,708 yards so far in their first two games of the 24-25 English Premier League season.

When considering City’s pitch at the Etihad Stadium is approximately 115 yards in length, they have passed that distance over 171 times in their first two games. Newly promoted Ipswich Town have only passed for a total of 8,260 yard or approximately 72 lengths of the Etihad. That’s roughly 100 less pitch lengths of passing distance!

However, things look different when considering the total progressive pass distance. In fact, this statistic is quite telling. Is a team willing to lose the ball in an attempt to advance up the pitch? Or is a team comfortable holding onto possession of the ball, even if it means tracking backwards?

Liverpool and Tottenham are the only two teams to date whose total progressive passing distance is over 6,000 yards. Liverpool has 6,289 yards while Tottenham have 6,020 yards. Alternatively, Aston Villa (3,963), Wolves (3,719) and Ipswich Town (3,246) are the only three teams with less than 4,000 progressive passing yards after their first two matches.

The real metric is looking at the total progressive passing distance divided by the total passing distance. This provides the percentage of completed passes that travelled towards the opponents goal.

Newcastle United and Everton lead the charge with the highest percentage of progressive distance passes. Of the 9,530 yards of completed passes by Newcastle so far this 24-25 season, 4,148 yards have been in the direction of the opponents goal. Likewise for Everton, 42% of passed distance have been in the direction of the opponents goal.

When looking at Southampton and Manchester City, who are the top two teams for total distance passed, they have the lowest percentage of those passes being towards the opponents goal. They are happy to keep possession of the ball, pass backwards, regroup, and try again. Instead of forcing a forward play and risk losing possession.

Pass Types

Finally, we focus on the different types of passes that teams have made at this point in the 2024-2025 Premier League season.

2024-2025 English Premier League Passing Leader Board (as of 24.08.29)

Type of Pass	Team	Passes
Live Passes	Southampton	1,298
Deadball Passes	Newcastle United	108
Offsides	Everton	11
Free Kicks	Newcastle United	38
Through Balls	Liverpool	9
Switches	Brighton	9
Crosses	Tottenham	48
Throw-ins	Liverpool	42
Corner Kicks	Tottenham	25

Southampton have made the most passes during live play with 1,298. Newcastle are leading with the most dead ball passes (108) as well as the most passes attempted from a free kick with 38.

Everton, unfortunately, are leading with the most passes offside with 11. To note for comparison, there are currently 6-teams who only have 1 offside pass this season. While Liverpool are leading through balls with 9 (defined as a completed pass sent between two defenders into space, 3 from Trent Alexander-Arnold) as well as throw-ins with 42 (Andy Robertson who has taken 18 of those).

Brighton lead the league with 9 switches (4 from Jack Hinshelwood), defined as passes that travel more than 40 yards of the width of the pitch. Lastly, Tottenham lead the league in both crosses (48, of which James Maddison has 16) and corner kicks (25).

Summary

With the first two games completed in the English Premier League 2024-2025 seasons, in this post we dive deep into passes thus far. At first, we covered the different pass lengths and the difference in proportions of pass lengths (short, medium, long) that different teams make.

Secondly, we focused on team’s total passing distances as well as the total passing progressive distance. In this section, we outlined two types of teams:

1. Teams that are focused only on forward passes, who risk forcing the ball and losing possession in the process.
2. Teams that are comfortable in possession of the ball and okay with passing backwards to the back line, or even the goalkeeper, and resetting.

In the last section of the post, we covered various different pass types and the current leaders of the different pass types.

As the season progresses, we will continue to monitor teams and individuals passing styles and seeing which patterns emerge. And if those patterns can help correlate to a teams position in the league table.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned and send us a message if there is a specific topic you would like to see covered.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read these posts!

JC