Manchester City and Aston Villa finished the 2025/26 Premier League season separated by just one point on FIVDA’s offside-balance measure.
City recorded a balance of +67, with Villa immediately behind on +66. Third-placed Fulham managed +32, less than half either club’s total.
What makes those figures particularly interesting is that they compare two sides of the offside rule: how often a club’s own players are caught offside, and how often the same thing happens to its opponents.
The result reveals a remarkable similarity between City and Villa, alongside some striking differences elsewhere in the division.
What exactly is an offside balance?
Most football supporters are familiar with seeing offsides listed among a team’s match statistics. Usually, the number tells us how many times that team’s attacking players were penalised for being offside.
But every Premier League club also has another offside total: the number of times its opponents were caught offside against it.
FIVDA’s calculation brings these two figures together:
Offside balance = Opponents’ offsides − Club’s own offsides
A positive result means the club’s opponents were caught offside more frequently than its own players. A negative result means the club was caught offside more often than its opponents. A balance of zero means the two totals were equal.
Manchester City provide a straightforward example.
According to FBref’s 2025/26 Premier League miscellaneous statistics, City were caught offside 44 times across their 38 league fixtures. Their opponents were penalised 111 times.
Subtracting City’s 44 offsides from the opposition’s 111 produces a balance of +67.
A conventional offside leaderboard identifies the teams caught offside most often. FIVDA’s calculation offers a different perspective by showing whether a club experienced more offside decisions against its opponents than against its own attackers.
City and Villa were remarkably similar across 38 matches
Manchester City and Aston Villa did not simply finish close together on the final ranking. Their underlying figures were almost identical.
| 2025/26 Premier League | Manchester City | Aston Villa |
| Own offsides | 44 | 43 |
| Opponents’ offsides | 111 | 109 |
| Offside balance | +67 | +66 |
Across an entire league campaign, Villa recorded just one fewer attacking offside than City. Their opponents were caught offside only twice fewer than City’s.
Expressed per match, City averaged approximately 1.16 offsides of their own, while Villa averaged 1.13. Their opponents, meanwhile, averaged 2.92 and 2.87 offsides per match respectively.
For both clubs, opponents were caught offside at more than twice the frequency of their own attacking players.
FIVDA’s earlier analysis of Aston Villa’s 2025/26 season also noted how rarely Villa’s attacking players had been caught offside after 20 matches.
What makes this particularly unusual is that the calculation has two moving parts. Two teams can arrive at the same balance through very different figures: one might record relatively few attacking offsides, while another might have a much higher opposition offside count.
City and Villa, however, reached almost identical balances with almost identical underlying totals across 38 league fixtures.
The gap to the rest of the Premier League
The similarity between the leading pair becomes more striking when placed alongside the other clubs.
Fulham finished third on +32, which was 35 behind City and 34 behind Villa. Leeds United followed on +21, with Manchester United on +11.
City’s balance was therefore more than double Fulham’s, despite Fulham being the closest challenger outside the leading pair.
The scale of the difference is visible in the comparison chart.
Manchester City and Aston Villa finished almost level at the top of the 2025/26 Premier League offside-balance ranking, far ahead of the other clubs.
The gap highlights why considering both offside totals matters.
A team could record relatively few attacking offsides but still finish with a modest balance if its opponents were rarely caught offside either. Conversely, a club could accumulate a large number of opposition offsides while also being penalised frequently itself.
City and Villa combined relatively low own-offside totals with much larger opposition counts, creating a separation that the chasing clubs did not approach.
Arsenal show the other side of the calculation
Arsenal provide a particularly revealing contrast.
While Manchester City finished on +67 and Aston Villa on +66, Arsenal recorded a balance of −36.
That means Arsenal’s own attacking players were caught offside 36 more times than their opponents were. It is the reverse of the relationship recorded by City and Villa.
The difference between City’s +67 and Arsenal’s −36 was 103 offsides across the season.
It is a substantial contrast, but not necessarily evidence of superior defending or more effective attacking movement.
A team attempting frequent runs behind opposition defenders may accumulate attacking offsides. Opposition offside totals can also be influenced by the movements and passing decisions of opposing attackers, as well as the defensive situations they encounter.
These are possible influences, not explanations established by the figures.
The data record offside decisions, not the tactical actions responsible for them. For a separate view of Arsenal’s defensive performance, see FIVDA’s analysis of the defensive statistics behind their early-season league lead.
City’s positive balance does not prove they operated a more effective offside trap, just as Arsenal’s negative balance does not establish that their defensive organisation was inferior.
What the comparison does establish is how differently offside decisions were distributed between the clubs and their opponents.
A different way to look at offsides
Offside statistics rarely attract the attention given to goals, chances or possession. Yet bringing attacking and opposition offsides together reveals an overlooked aspect of Premier League matches.
The 2025/26 figures show a considerable range, from City’s and Villa’s unusually large positive balances to Arsenal’s negative total.
But the most memorable discovery is not simply the ranking. It is how closely the two leading clubs matched each other across both components of the calculation.
Over 38 matches, Manchester City recorded just one more attacking offside than Aston Villa and faced only two more opposition offsides.
A single offside separated their final balances, but the extraordinary similarity extended to the numbers behind them. That is what makes City’s and Villa’s 2025/26 records such an interesting Premier League curiosity.
Main image is by Jonny Gios on Unsplash.
