2024 table: Premier League & EFL

How each team fared during the calendar year

With the final league games of 2024 now completed, it's time for one of the least complex Experimental 361 traditions: a combined calendar year table for the 92 current Premier League and EFL clubs.

I’ve calculated a massive league table sorted in descending order of points per game, followed by goal difference and then goals scored. To keep things as fair as possible, cup and play-off games have been excluded. Clubs who were promoted or relegated in the summer have had their records from both divisions combined, including National League games for the promoted clubs in League Two.

Points deductions haven’t been included as they apply to a specific season (so it’d be tricky to apportion them) and in any case they would detract from the purpose of comparing performances.

Here's the full table in all its glory - for anyone who has trouble viewing such a tall image on their device, I've also added it to my Google Drive space alongside some more manageable chunks here.

Arsenal’s defence makes the difference

Arsenal are the 2024 “champions” of the English professional leagues, having racked up the same number of points as Liverpool in one game fewer. Even if the Reds had won the postponed Merseyside derby earlier this month, it wouldn’t have been enough to close the gap.

While Liverpool were English football’s most impressive attacking team with an average of 2.49 goals per game, they only netted three more times than the Gunners. It was a different story at the back: Arsenal conceded 17 fewer goals and maintained the nation’s best defensive record with just 0.69 conceded per game.

Fully half of Arsenal’s games ended in a clean sheet, which only fourth-placed Leeds (56%) were able to better. The Reds found the net more reliably though, drawing only three blanks in 37 league games this year. As a proportion this narrowly loses out to that of Manchester City, who also failed to score three times but over 38 games.

Speaking of the reigning Premier League champions, if I’d run this table at the start of November then they would have been sitting comfortably clear at the top with 2.64 points per game and zero defeats. All six of their 2024 losses have occurred since then, dropping them down to third.

Jumping back briefly to Leeds before we move on, it’s interesting to see no other Championship teams in the top 20 this year. They had a near-perfect start to 2024, winning 37 points out of a possible 39 and conceding just three goals in the process.

No symmetry this year

There was further disappointment in Manchester yesterday evening when Newcastle’s Joelinton robbed us of a perfectly symmetrical record. Had the Magpies stopped scoring after Alexander Isak’s opener at Old Trafford then Manchester United would have finished 2024 with the same number of wins as losses and a goal difference of zero.

Peterborough came close to achieving symmetry in a more entertaining way, having drawn just five games - the smallest proportion in England - and winning one fewer than they lost with a combined goal difference of +2. Their defensive record was a far cry from the likes of Arsenal’s, having kept just four clean sheets this year. Only Morecambe mustered a lower percentage of shut-outs (also four, but from two more games in total).

The Posh were also one of 2024’s most entertaining teams for the neutral: second among five that saw over 3.5 total goals per game. Chelsea’s matches narrowly edged ahead of theirs in the entertainment stakes with an average of 3.68, with the others being Newcastle, Liverpool and Tottenham.

Other teams had a near brush with symmetry in a less exciting way. Stevenage and Millwall were the only clubs whose games served up fewer than two total goals on average. Meanwhile, Colchester were the anti-Peterborough: all about those draws. Over half of their matches ended in stalemate, which no other team came close to achieving.

It was also a year to forget for two clubs who failed to score in over half of their games: Rotherham (57%) and Cambridge (51%). However these two scraped together enough results to stay off the bottom of the 2024 table.

That dubious honour falls to Carlisle this year. One of the northernmost teams on the English football map is substantially lower down here, with the fewest points and worst goal difference per game. The Cumbrians finished bottom of League One last season and will finish 2024 in the League Two relegation zone.