The Premier League went goal crazy but how long before sanity is restored?

A record 44 goals were scored in the last round of Premier League games. How many will there be in this round?

The previous high was 43 goals in ten games played on February 5 and 6, 2011. In the next round there were ten games and 21 goals. Fewer than half as many.

The record I am talking about here is for a 20-team Premier League – that is to say, when ten games were scheduled in each round. Sometimes fewer were played.

There were ten games last weekend and there will be another ten between tomorrow and Monday. How many goals will be scored?

One way to think about what might happen next is to reflect on what happened next in similar circumstances in the past. It is not perfect, but it is less imperfect than some others. I call it studying the history of the future.

In the last 11 Premier League seasons there were similar numbers of goals. Those were seasons 2009-10 to 2019-20. Overall there were 2.7 goals per game. In no season were goals per game lower than 2.6 or higher than 2.8.

I put the games from those seasons in order and marked off each set. Sometimes, as I said, there were fewer than ten games in a set. I did not take into account sets with fewer than five games – that is to say, when fewer than half the teams played.

There was effectively no correlation between goals in one group of games and the next. No matter what the goals per game in one round, in the next it tended toward 2.7. After a lot of goals there were usually fewer. And after a low number of goals there was normally a higher number.

For all practical purposes, goals in one set of games seemed to be independent of goals in the next.

Why were there so many goals last weekend? It is easy to think of an explanation that sounds plausible at first, but hard to find one that withstands scrutiny.

Players had a shorter than usual break between seasons so maybe they were not ready. But this would not explain why there were only an unexceptional 2.9 goals per game on the opening weekend – 23 goals in eight games. Perhaps defenders are slowly becoming complacent in stadiums without fans. But why not attackers? And why not, say, in the Championship?

Really we do not know. It was a nice surprise, as records often are.

Leeds played in high-scoring games both weekends. They beat Fulham 4-3 after Liverpool had beaten them 4-3. Each Saturday Leeds scored from an abnormally high proportion of their shots.

Manager Marcelo Bielsa said: “This won’t be a constant all year. It is very difficult to maintain the efficiency we have had in these first two games. The characteristic of our game is to create goalscoring opportunities. In these two games we have created very little but we have scored all our chances”

Goals in football are celebrated so much because usually they are rare. If there were lots of goals every weekend they would no longer be so highly prized. We buy our beloved a diamond ring because we think diamonds are rare.

So how many goals will there be in the Premier League tomorrow, Sunday and Monday? The average number of goals in a round of ten fixtures is 27. If I were making a spread I would want 27 inside the spread.

The fast finishers who do not restart as quickly

My first published predictions were in a magazine called Football Monthly. Each season regular writers were asked to pick the winners of the Premier League, Championship, League One and League Two, as we call them now.

One season somebody tipped Lincoln to win their division because they had finished the previous season better than anyone else.

I was annoyed with myself. I had not noticed how well Lincoln had finished the previous season. And I thought that finishing last season strongly meant they were more likely this season to become champions. I felt I had missed an important clue.

I had not. It makes little difference. Lincoln, as things turned out, did not become champions.

Since then I have studied the relationship between points in a season and points from the previous season in the second half, in the first half and in total.

I did this for the Premier League and EFL. I started with season 1997-98 and went up to 2019-20, last season. I doubled points won in the first or second half of a season to get an equivalent for a full season. I left out teams who changed division. And I left out last season in League One and League Two because it was not completed.

For the next season there was a stronger correlation with the second half of the previous season than with the first half of the previous season. But not much. And there was a stronger correlation still with all of the previous season.

A whole season, naturally, has twice as many games as half a season. It contains more information. It tells us more.

What happened if I took into account all of the previous season but gave more weight to the second half than the first? I got a slightly stronger correlation. But only with similar weights – with the second half carrying hardly any more weight than the first.

On its own a great second-half – or a terrible second-half – does not offer the most prophetic insight into next season.

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