Game states 2024-25

How much time each team spent winning, drawing and losing

I’m rounding out the mini-burst of belated post-season summaries with another traditional look at some relatively simple data.

In the charts below, teams are ranked by the difference in the proportion of time they spent winning versus losing. I’ve also included their final league positions in brackets to make it easier to spot teams whose control of matches was noticeably out of whack with the number of points they won.

Premier League

While nobody spent more time winning than champions Liverpool, runners-up Arsenal maintained a similarly impressive skew by rarely falling behind. However, only Everton games saw the scores tied for longer than those involving the Gunners.

Brentford are an interesting outlier: they finished in mid-table despite spending a lot more time ahead than behind. While they were slightly below-average at protecting leads, what looks to have made the difference is their strong finish to the season: they were ahead for large chunks of time during their final six games.

Championship

In the second tier, the top three teams stood apart from the rest, with Burnley in particular impressive for how rarely they trailed. Meanwhile, no club in the top four divisions spent a larger share of time winning than Leeds.

It looks to have been a frustrating season for Preston, who spent marginally more time winning than losing yet somehow ended up 20th. They tied with Norwich for the most points dropped from winning positions (30) and only the Canaries conceded more equalisers (18 to 17).

League One

This was an impressively dominant season from champions Birmingham: nobody in the top four divisions had a bigger difference between time spent winning and losing (5.8 minutes leading for every minute they trailed).

Barnsley stand out here as having spent far more time winning than losing, yet ending up in mid-table. It looks like they led early in a lot of their wins, while a high proportion of their defeats saw them fall behind in the second halves of games.

Bolton were the other side of that coin: they were able to win 20 games and secure a top-half finish despite conceding the opening goal on 26 occasions (the 3rd highest after the relegated duo of Shrewsbury and Cambridge).

League Two

The fourth tier was alone in not having any standout dominant teams. While Wimbledon’s promotion was secured via the playoffs, they spent less time losing than anyone else.

Barrow had an odd season, with the fifth best balance of time spent winning versus losing despite their bottom-half finish. While they dropped an above-average share of points from winning positions, their issue looks to have been similar to Barnsley’s in the division above i.e. locking in a lot of their wins early, while a number of defeats were due to falling behind later in games.

Crewe and Swindon both secured mid-table finishes despite often having to chase games, implying that they succeeded at least some of the time. I count 20 equalisers scored by the Robins, which is five more than anyone else managed.