Last season, only 11.5% of goals scored in the Premier League came from outside the penalty area, the lowest figure Opta has recorded since the Premiership broke away from the Football League in 1992. That’s not a one-off: there have been fluctuations but the general trend over the past two decades has been a decline in the proportion of goals scored from long range. Which raises the obvious question of why? Is this the most clearcut evidence of the impact of data on football?
Its exact impact on how football is actually played at the highest level is difficult to measure, not least because clubs are so keen to obfuscate any advantage they do derive from analysis to preserve their competitive advantage.
The tactics analyst Michael Cox made the intriguing argument in the Athletic this past week that, with one or two specific exceptions, data hasn’t actually made as much of an impact on how the game is actually played as is often claimed.
The proportion of shots from range has fallen by around a quarter in the Premier League over the past decade, so perhaps it is true that players now have some awareness of the xG of shooting from given positions and modulate their behaviour accordingly, but there are other details in the data on long-range goals that seem telling.
First, there were 143 goals scored from outside the penalty area last season, compared with 145 the previous season and 144 the season before that. In the preceding two seasons, there were 122 and 125. In absolute terms, the number of long-range goals is not going down; rather goals from inside the area are going up. That may be indicative of greater efficiency, but it also suggests the picture is more complex than proportion alone suggests.
Long-range goals peaked in 2006-07 (the highest proportion: 20.2%) and 2007-08 (the highest tally: 191) and began to fall in 2008, which stands tactically as a landmark year. Before 2008, there had been only one season in which goals per game in the knockout stages of the Champions League averaged more than three; afterwards, the average wouldn’t fall below three again until 2020-21. 2008 was also the year that Pep Guardiola took over as manager of Barcelona.
Guardiola is the most influential manager of modern times. He has been a direct influence on two managers of leading Premier League clubs, Mikel Arteta and Enzo Maresca, and he stands at the forefront of a philosophical movement that began at Ajax in the late 60s and numbers among its members at least half a dozen other Premier League managers.
But there’s also indirect influence. Go to a non-league game and you’ll see goal-kicks being taken short and moves constructed from deep. Gifted left-footed children of above average height, whatever their position, are being converted into central defenders because there is such a dearth of left-sided centre-backs, who are desperately needed for teams wishing to play out from the back.
That’s where the picture begins to blur. Could Guardiola achieve all that? Do coaches in the eighth and ninth tiers of English football really see themselves as mini-Peps? And if Guardiola is the reason for the change, how did it happen so quickly? How could he have such an influence in his first season as a coach? That is not to say Guardiola is not influential; he is, enormously so. His success gives validity to his methods and there undoubtedly are lower-league coaches who have drawn inspiration from him and his methods.
But there is also a question of environment. Guardiola was not operating in a vacuum. When he became Barcelona manager, the conditions were ripe for his brand of football to be successful. Pitches, balls and equipment were all of a level that allowed for tight, technical football, for rondos to be transplanted from the training ground on to the pitch, while changes to the offside law expanded the effective playing area and a crackdown on intimidatory tackling made it harder for teams to bully smaller, technically gifted players.
Guardiola took full advantage and perhaps crystallised in the minds of many what possession football could achieve in these conditions; had he not existed the game may not quite have taken the direction it did, but equally the age of attrition, of José Mourinho and Rafa Benítez, of Greece winning the Euros, was coming to a close.
There has been a revolution in pitch preparation, especially at lower levels: hybrid surfaces run much truer for much longer. Whatever your intent or however devout your faith in a philosophy, you can’t play rondos on a rutted crust or a mud bath.
That’s perhaps the biggest lesson from the statistics on long-range goals: there are always multiple causes; nothing is ever straightforward. Long-range shooting generally has been growing rarer since the mid-60s, while the number of shots required for each goal has gone down. Teams are passing more and shooting less.
This is all consistent with the environmental factors from which Guardiola benefited. When pitches and equipment were poor, it made sense to get the ball forward quickly. When brutal challenges were part of the game, it made sense not to linger on the ball. If a chance to shoot presented itself, it tended to be worth taking on; playing an extra two or three passes to work a better position is senseless if possession can be lost to a turf bobble or a wild challenge.
But there are other factors. If opponents sit in a low block at the edge of their own penalty area, 25-yard drives might become worth taking on if only because playing through the block to create a higher xG chance is so difficult.
Fewer long-range shots may be a sign of higher defensive lines. And nothing is permanent: 16.3% of goals at Euro 2024 were scored from outside the area and, before this weekend in the Premier League, from an admittedly low sample of three games, had rallied to 14.5%.
Data, an awareness of what is effective, is probably making a difference to when players shoot but, equally, it is reflecting the way they are playing, and that is conditioned by countless factors, environmental and philosophical. Few relationships in football are ever one way, and almost everything is connected.
