How has goal scoring changed in English football?
Football (soccer) in England has held league competitions starting from 1888. Over time, there have been a number of significant changes: new leagues formed, the Premier League breaking away, rule changes, and world wars. How has this affected the number of goals scored in a league match?
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As I explained in a previous blog post, I have a complete set of results for English football league games, so I’m able to analyze what going on in some detail. Here’s what I’ve found.
Total goals
The first question I asked is: is the number of goals per match increasing or decreasing? By total goals, I mean the number of goals scored by the home club plus the number of goals scores by the away club. Scoreless games are boring, so we want to see some goals per match.
The chart below shows the mean number of total goals per match per season per league. I’ve included the standard deviation as a band. This chart is interactive, click on the legend to turn the league on and off. The salmon bands are World War I and World War II when the leagues were suspended
Because the standard deviation band obscures the chart, I’ve drawn it again, this time without the standard deviation. It’s interactive too.
How do we understand the goal trends over time? I can explain some of what’s happening, but not quite all.
The period from 1888 to the start of the first World War is the birth of English competitive football. The second league tier was established in 1892, with promotion and relegation between the first and second tier. As the game developed (and clubs became more professional), and with promotion and relegation, the leagues became more equal.
Post World Wars I and II, there’s an increase in goals, perhaps representing some kind of post-war reset. Although matches happened during World War II, it was in a substantially altered form with fewer and different players, and something similar happened in World War I. Bear in mind, players’ careers are short and a break of a few years is very significant. Wartime also disrupted player development from children’s games upwards. League resumption post-war is a significant reset.
I can’t find any good reason for the sharp drop in goals starting in about 1964; there are no obvious rule changes and no significant events. The change is across all leagues, suggesting a game-wide and country-wide change. Perhaps someone reading this can shine some light on what happened.
Notably, after about 1970, almost all leagues and all seasons look the same. The exception is the Premier League (tier 1) from about 2008 onwards, which shows an increase in total goals per game. I’ll dig into the why behind this next – the key to understanding it is goal difference.
Goal difference
I define goal difference as the absolute value of (home goals – away goals). I calculated the mean goal difference per season per league and I’ve shown this metric in the chart below, once again, it’s interactive, click on the legend to turn the leagues on and off.
Post 1993, the Premier League shows an increase in mean goal difference, but the other leagues don’t. Why?
The Premier League was founded in 1993, and from 1993 to 2025, the increase in goal difference is about 0.25 goals per match, which is gradual enough for fans not to notice over a thirty-year period. Of course, there are two explanations for this trend: teams becoming less equal or changes to the style of play. In a previous blog post, I showed the Premier League was becoming less equal (it’s not a style of play thing), and the goal difference trend since 1993 helps quantify the inequality. It’s not just that some Premier League teams are winning more than others, their margin of victory is increasing too.
What does the goal future look like?
My suspicion is, the Premier League goal difference trend will continue. The top clubs will dominate and matches will become more predictable and more one-sided as the margin of victory for the top teams increases: more goals for the top teams, fewer goals for the weaker teams. I can’t see any realistic prospect for change because of the amounts of money invested and at risk.
For the lower leagues, I think life will continue as it is now, we’ll see the same number of goals over a season. One change maybe an influx of money into some lower league clubs with the goal of moving them up the league system (e.g., Wrexham, Birmingham City), but that may be restricted to just a handful of clubs.
As with all things, change (or the lack of it) come from money.
Other football posts:
- Win, lose, or draw - https://blog.engora.com/2025/06/english-football-data.html