Premier League Shot Efficiency Ratings

With the 2023/24 Premier League season now at an end, a story that took nearly nine months to write has finally seen its last chapter penned and with Manchester City ruling the roost once again, it means a sixth crown in seven years under manager Pep Guardiola.

Something that almost defies footballing logic when you consider the length of dominance the Etihad outfit are on and although there is the ongoing backdrop of 115 charges being brought against them, their legal team seem to be just as good as keeping the Premier League's lawmakers on the back foot. 

Whether City ever do get punished remains to be seen but they undoubtedly punished Arsenal for failing to get the job done for a second season in a row, as the Gunners once again had to make do with finishing in second.

City have the spoils and they do so because of another scintilating season of attacking prowess but although the league table cannot be argued, their level of prowess perhaps can.

Because in a world where expected goals have gained more prominence in the past few years, there is another measure of attacking success that can be utilised and one that measures just how efficient a team is in front of goal.

Which is something that we are now going to analyse in our latest deep dive and for those who are unaware on how to measure shot efficiency, the equation is as simple as:

Total Goals Scored / Total Shots = Shot Efficiency Rating

Now that this measure is clear for all to see, lets first list the 20 Premier League clubs from 2022/23 in order of total shots taken.

As we can see, it is Liverpool who top the ladder when it comes to total shots in the 2023/24 Premier League season, they may have run out of steam when it comes to their own bid for the title but there is no doubt that Jurgen Klopp's men made plenty of effort when it comes to attacks in the opposition's final third.

With 790 shots in total, the Reds had more attempts than both Manchester City and Arsenal who finished ahead of them in the final table. Then again, it is not about the number of shots you have, it is how efficient you are in front of goal.

City only ranked second in the table but will take solace in the fact that they are champions once more and once again, Arsenal had to make do with being on their coattails. The champions recording 692 shots in total, the runners-up recording 657 by comparison.

That explains the top three, but we also need to explain a tiebreaker for those teams who finished joint sixth and joint seventeeth in our overall shot table.

The tiebreaker being a higher league position and one that favoured Newcastle over Manchester United in terms of sixth and Luton over Burnley when seeing who finished fourth-bottom instead of third in the list. 

Interestingly the bottom three clubs in the real life Premier League table also found themselves in the bottom four when it comes to shots across the season. .

Now that we know the lie of the land regarding shot rank, the next step will be to see how this compares to each team’s real-life finishing position and then track what correlations may or may not come to life.

From this table, we can see that 19 clubs failed to match their positions in both the shot ranks and league ranks - the only club that managed to do was bottom of the table Sheffield United, while there was a considerable amount of variance when looking at each of the clubs that finished in the top six of the Premier League.

While the easiest way to add more context to this, is by listing the same table in order of rank difference.

As you can see Brighton and Everton had the biggest disparity between their final league placings and high shot tallies, while Aston Villa and West Ham suffered the imbalance of higher league placings but a low shot efficiency ranking by comparison.

This is something to consider when we plug in the data for shot efficiency, and when we take the shot counts and add goals into the mix, here is what we now see.

As we can see, it is Newcastle who were the most efficient team when measured as a percentage and although Eddie Howe's men may have wasted the opportuniy to earn a second successive season in Europe, they were not wasteful in terms of chances.

The Magpies recorded a shot efficiency rating of 15.43%, 0.72% higher than that of Aston Villa in second and although the Villa Park outfit only took 517 shots all season, their efficiency rating was an impressive 14.71%

As for Chelsea, they finished third when it comes to efficiency by percentage and although the West London outfit would secure a return to European football, they would still say goodbye to manager Mauricio Pochettino just days after the season came to an end.

The Blues finished sixth in the Premier League, one position worse off than Tottenham and it is the North London outfit that were the seventh most efficient in front of goal. No Champions League football for Spurs but if it was this metric alone, they would be playing in Europa Conference League instead of the Europa League next season. 

Spurs were less efficient than London rivals West Ham, as the Hammers edged their way into sixth place with an efficiency rating of 13.38%. Both these two sides from the capital were edged out by Arsenal who finished fifth at 13.84%.

Once again, it was the same story in terms of Arsenal getting edged out by Manchester City and although Pep Guardiola's men were only fourth when it came to efficiency by percentage, they did manage to sneak past the Gunners with 13.88%.

While Liverpool who took the most chances all season, could only convert just over 1 in 10 of those into goals. 790 efforts, 86 goals - an efficiecy ranking of 10.88% and only 13th in the standings after being wedged between Fulham and Nottingham Forest. 

However, they did fare better than local rivals Manchester United and with Erik ten Hag's side only registering 10.34% worth of efficiency when connected to their shots for the season, a star striker is arguably top of their summer shopping list.

Once again though, we can see how positioning in this table compares to that of the final 2023/24 Premier League table and in doing so, we can get an idea of what correlation there is between efficiency and overall placement.

Here we can see that Burnley are the only club that matched their efficiency ranking with the league position. A look at the other 19 teams involved and the picture gets far more distorted.

Especially when you look at both Luton and Newcastle. The Hatters suffered a return to the Championship at the first time of asking but even with their eventual 18th place in the Premier League table, they did manage to become the ninth-most efficient club in terms of shots to goals.

The biggest positive disparity in the league, with Newcaslte and Brentford sharing second spot with a positive difference of six places each. The Magpies finishing seventh but the most efficient, the Bees finishing 16th but 10th in terms of efficiency.

While at the other end of this comparitive table, it is Liverpool who were the worst off when comparing the two metrics. The most shots overall and third in the Premier League table but only 13th in terms of efficiency and a whole 10 positions worse off when comparing one table to another.