Who’s overperforming the Premier League more than anyone else right now? Aston Villa — by a huge margin. Over a 13-match span, Unai Emery’s team has collected 24 points from an expected 13.5 — an overperformance of +10.5 points. For comparison, the second-best team in this metric, Sunderland, sits at +7.4. Everyone else is somewhere around two or three. One of the reasons behind Villa’s surge isn’t just the quality of their football but their unique long-shot efficiency. They’ve pushed it to near perfection. After 13 matchdays, they already have nine goals from outside the box. If they keep up this pace, they’ll finish the season with 26 long-range goals. The Premier League record belongs to Chelsea 2006/07 with 23 goals from outside the box. Villa are currently ahead of that pace. Their average shot distance is 14.9 meters, the longest in the league. Villa deliberately take long shots, and right now they’re getting incredible value out of that strategy.
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Fulham and Man City yesterday decided to play without any defence — nine goals combined, 4:5, absolute chaos. The funniest part: the quality of chances didn’t come anywhere close to justifying such a goal fest. Only 3.57 expected goals (xG) in total — 0.92 for Fulham and 2.65 for City. They scored almost three times more than they “should” have. Before this game, there had only been three cases in Premier League history where a team scored four goals yet still lost. Fulham just became the fourth. 1994 — Norwich 4:5 Southampton 2004 — Tottenham 4:5 Arsenal 2016 — Norwich 4:5 Liverpool 2025 — Fulham 4:5 Man City
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A perfect half from Marc Cucurella: an assist from his low cross, he forced Ronald Araújo into a red card, and he’s absolutely shutting down Lamine Yamal (you can barely see him on the pitch). Sure, there’s still a whole half to play, but it’s really hard to believe in a Barcelona comeback—especially down to ten men. And Chelsea are genuinely excellent today.
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