A Premier League team’s build up play in and around the box is important and exciting to watch, especially when the passage of play ends in a goal. But are there instances of over passing in an attempt to set up the perfect shot on goal, when earlier opportunities to shoot had been available?
The focus of this article is touches in the final third of the pitch and how these numbers correlate to shots and goals. The question we are hoping to answer is, which teams are overpassing in front of goal? And alternatively, for the teams that are struggling to put the ball in the back of the net, could any teams benefit from an extra touch to settle the ball before taking a strike on goal?
In this article, we look to answer these questions based on the data available after the first 7 matches in the 25-26 Premier League season. Keep reading below for more details.
Touches: Who Controls the Ball Most in the Final Third?
Before digging into which teams are overpassing in front of goal, let’s take a look at which squads have taken the most and least touches so far this 25-26 Premier League season.
Before we get too far, in the data set we are using (from fbref.com), a touch is defined as the number of times a player touches the ball. To note, when a player receives a pass, dribbles and then sends a pass, this all counts as one touch.
Touches and possession are often closely related but not always. For instance, after the first 7 match weeks in the Premier League, Arsenal are ranked 3rd highest for possession (57.6% of possession average in their matches) but ranked 5th highest for touches (4,490 touches total in all Premier League matches).
For starters, we look at the number of touches a team takes in the final third of the pitch, as well as in the penalty area.
After 7 matches, Nottingham Forest leads the league with touches in the attacking third with 1267 (averages to 181 touches in the final third per match).
The Premier League average after 7 matches is 986 touches (140 touches per match) in the attacking third, while Brentford have the lowest at this point in the season with 658 touches (26 touches per match).
Penalty Area Touches: Turning Possession into Chances
However, when we look just at the touches in the attacking penalty area, there are some notable changes in team’s rankings. Arsenal has 236 touches in the penalty area after 7 matches which is by far more than Liverpool, who ranks second with 190.
Nottingham Forest who ranked first for total touches in the attacking third, now place 10th when ranking teams by touches in the penalty area.
While Nottingham may have more touches in the attacking third, it appears they aren’t as effective at entering their opponent’s penalty area with the ball as other teams are.
Burnley have 101 touches in their opponent’s penalty area which is the least for any Premier League team after 7 matches. The graph below provides a visual to better see how Premier League squads rank amongst each other for touches in their opponent’s penalty area.
Percentage of Touches in Attacking Penalty Box
What makes it more interesting is when we look at the percentage of touches in the opponent’s penalty area to total touches in the attacking third. Which helps answer how effective teams are at penetrating their opponent’s box and getting a shot off.
Maybe surprising to some based on their ranking in the previous two graphs but Crystal Palace have the highest percentage of touches in the penalty area compared to touches in the attacking third at 20.3%.
Said a different way, 20.3% of all Crystal Palace’s touches in the attacking third are in their opponent’s penalty area. While Palace have less touches than other teams, they are effective at using those touches to get inside their opponent’s penalty area.
For context, Arsenal is second at 18.7% while Nottingham Forest is last at 12.9% (i.e. only 12.9% of Forest’s touches in the attacking third are in their opponent’s penalty area).
Getting into the attacking penalty area with the ball is key to get off shots and score goals. As discussed further later on in this article, the average shot distance in the Premier League so far this season after 7 matches is 16.4 yards with the average goal being scored from 11.7 yards.
In all cases, it underlines how necessary it is for a team to maximize the amount of touches they have in the attacking penalty area.
Efficiency: Touches per Shot in the Premier League
Now we have a better understanding of the importance of touches in an opponent’s penalty area, we can start to compare that to the number of shots taken and goals scored to see if teams are overpassing (or maybe under passing) in front of goal.
As noted above, the average shot distance so far this Premier League season is less than 18-yards and within the penalty area. There are some squads who’s average shot distance is a bit more than 18-yards but no team is over 19-yards.
So, when you divide the total number of touches in the attacking penalty area by the total number of shots taken, we get a touches in the attacking penalty area per shot metric.
Tottenham have the highest in the league at 2.4, that is on average, 2.4 touches in the attacking penalty area for every shot they take. Newly promoted Sunderland and Leeds are tied with the least at 1.6, the Premier League average is 1.95. Meaning Sunderland and Leeds take 0.8 less touches in the penalty area to get a shot off than Tottenham.
While it might seem insignificant, it adds up over time. For instance, it look Tottenham 184 touches in the attacking penalty area to produce 77 shots, while it only took 109 touches for Sunderland to produce 69 shots.
In the graph below, the total touches in the attacking penalty area is displayed in the grey bars. The orange line graph is when we overlay the total number of shots taken. The teams are trending downwards left to right based on the total number of touches in the attacking penalty area.
Where there the orange line is above or below the grey bar, there is a story to be told.
For instance, you can see the total shots of both Liverpool and Arsenal are approximately the same (orange line), but Arsenal has taken far more touches than Liverpool. Which perhaps indicates that Arsenal is overpassing in the penalty area and not getting their shots off fast enough.
Similar with Tottenham, they have the same number of shots as Aston Villa (77 vs. 76), but it took them far more touches (184 vs. 156) in the penalty area to produce those shots.
At the other end of the spectrum, you can look at Manchester United, which appears to be very efficient at taking shots when compared to the number of touches they take in the penalty area (orange line well above grey bar).
For a comparison, Manchester United and City have relatively the same number of touches in the attacking penalty area (185 vs. 183) but United have far more shots than City (102 vs. 86).
However, when seeing that United have scored 7 goals vs. City’s 13 goals, it might suggest that United are shooting too quickly in the build up before the right opportunity.
Maybe United could do with an extra touch or two in the penalty area to set themselves up for a better goal scoring opportunity, as all those shots aren’t producing more goals. We completed a full analysis of United a few weeks ago that you can read here.
It is a fine balance between too many and too little touches in the penalty area to produce a shot for the best goal scoring opportunity.
As of 7 matches played in the 25-26 Premier League season, it appears that Chelsea and Bournemouth are good examples of effectively taking shots when compared with the number of touches they are taking in the penalty area.
Touches vs. Goals: Are Some Clubs Too Patient?
The final graph we’ll share in this article is the touches in the attacking penalty area when compared to the total number of goals scored. Similar to above, the grey bars indicate total touches in the attacking penalty area but now the blue line indicates total goals scored.
To note, total goals scored doesn’t include own goals. As an example, United have 9 goals in total so far this season but only 7 were scored by United, the other 2 were own goals. The data used in this graph doesn’t include those two own goals, we’re looking strictly at goals scored by each team.
While the orange lined graph above provided insights into which teams were over passing in front of goal, the blue lined graph more focuses on the quality of the chances and shots created.
As noted above, Manchester United is underperforming quite significantly in number of goals scored when compared to other teams with similar number of touches in the attacking penalty area.
United have 185 touches in the attacking penalty area but have scored the same number of goals as Leeds, Sunderland and Burnley who have 135, 109 and 101 touches respectively.
A similar story can be said for Newcastle, Forest, Villa and Fulham who are all underperforming in terms of goals scored.
Other teams like Manchester City, Chelsea, as well as Brighton, Palace, and Brentford are all scoring more goals than teams with the similar number of touches in the attacking penalty area.
Final Thoughts: The Balance Between Passing and Shooting
Well, that’s it for this article. In this post, we take a look at touches inside the attacking penalty area and how that compares to the number of shots taken and goals scored by each Premier League team. All data is as of match week 7 before the international break.
Arsenal far exceeds any other team with the number of touches inside the attacking penalty area but Liverpool only has 3 fewer shots than Arsenal despite far fewer touches in the attacking box.
This might indicate that in some instances, they are overpassing in the box and instead should be getting more shots off. The same can be said for Tottenham, that maybe more shots should be produced for the number of touches they have inside their opponent’s box.
When looking at goals scored in comparison to touches in the attacking penalty box, Manchester United is lagging behind significantly, scoring 5 or 6 goals less than Tottenham and City respectively, despite having a similar number of touches.
However, with United the issue isn’t getting shots off, it appears to be more an issue with the quality of the shot. Maybe in their case, an extra touch or two could help settle the ball to enable a better chance on goal.
What are your thoughts on the graphs and data presented in this article? Do anything surprise you when reading?
We haven’t looked at the touches inside the penalty area in comparison to shots taken before, so it was an interesting article to research and see which teams are overpassing in front of goal. Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.
Stay tuned for future posts and please send us a message if there is a specific topic you would like to see covered. Additionally, if you have any ideas on how to improve these articles, please send them our way too.
As always, thanks for taking the time to read these posts!
JC
All data in this article is from fbref.com so, thanks to them!