Premier League 2026-27 five games in: one defining stat for every club

Five games, twenty stories

Five matchdays into the 2026-27 season the Premier League table is looking better for some teams — Manchester City, Brighton, Brentford, Hull — than it is for others — Spurs, Fulham, Bournemouth. The table is what matters, but the underlying numbers show more than meets the eye. Opta Analyst has picked one statistic that sums up each side’s campaign so far, in order of current league position.

Manchester City: elite chance quality

Just five games into the Enzo Maresca era, Manchester City sit top with the only remaining 100% record in the top four tiers of English football. The run has been built not on a solid defence but on an extremely talented and ruthlessly efficient attack.

City are averaging higher-quality chances than any other Premier League team this season, with the average expected goals value of their non-penalty shots the best of the lot at 0.15. That has helped them maintain the best non-penalty conversion rate too, 19.1%. This is the 15th instance of a team winning their first five games of a Premier League season, but only four of the previous 14 have gone on to win the title. City’s lethal attack gives them as good a chance as any of joining that group.

Arsenal: running the teams off the pitch

Arsenal have the talent to beat anyone — the Brighton defeat was an off day — but they also prioritise physical effort. Across their first five games Mikel Arteta’s men have run 22.7 kilometres more than their opponents, the biggest positive difference of any team so far.

The fact they have more of the ball, averaging 59.5% possession, makes the statistic even starker: Arsenal’s players work incredibly hard both in and out of possession.

Brighton: suffocating high press

No other team has embodied the importance of hard work out of possession more than Brighton. Fabian Hürzeler’s side have enforced a suffocating high press to devastating effect, with the lowest PPDA — opposition passes per defensive action — rate of every team in the Premier League at 7.4.

That has resulted in Brighton forcing more high turnovers, 56, than any other team this season.

Brentford: never behind

It helps when you’re trying not to lose matches if you never go behind, and Brentford have very nearly done just that. Over their five Premier League matches they have been trailing for just three minutes and 10 seconds, all of which came when they briefly went 2-1 down away to Bournemouth before equalising shortly afterwards.

That accounts for just 0.6% of their entire season so far, the lowest of all top-flight teams. They remain one of just five undefeated sides and sit flying high in fourth.

Leeds: set-piece specialists

Leeds have become a very good multi-faceted team under Daniel Farke, and while they are by no means reliant on set-pieces, they do use them more than most. They are top of the Premier League this season for the proportion of their shots, 46.7%, and xG, 41.0%, which have been generated at non-penalty set-pieces.

They have scored three of their seven goals from dead-ball situations. Set-pieces aren’t the reason Leeds are fifth and unbeaten, but they are clearly a significant part of the reason.

Liverpool: sprints over distance

With draws rescued late on against both Newcastle and Nottingham Forest, more dropped points at home to struggling Fulham, and two wins that weren’t exactly convincing against Ipswich and Bournemouth, it hasn’t been the strongest start to life at Anfield for Andoni Iraola.

Liverpool rank bottom of the Premier League for distance covered, 110.3 km per game, but are top for sprints, 636 in total or 127.2 per game. Perhaps that’s an indication of precisely what their new manager wants: energy conserved for the moments when they have to go all out.

Everton: front-foot pressures

David Moyes is hardly associated with a high-pressing style, but early evidence this season is that he is asking his team to play on the front foot more than we are maybe accustomed to seeing.

Everton lead the Premier League this season for pressures applied in the opposition half, 1,145, and in the final third, 682, while no team has forced more high turnovers that have led to a shot on goal than their total of 11.

Hull: direct throwback

In an era in which playing through the lines is almost essential, Hull are a throwback. Manager Sergej Jakirovic knows his side’s limitations and has set his team up not to muck about with the ball and to get it forward quickly.

They’ve had plenty of chances, 61, and have scored a decent number of goals, 6, but have put together just two ‘build-up attacks’, defined as open-play sequences of at least 10 passes that end in a touch in the opposition’s box or a shot. Their rate of 0.4 build-up attacks per game is the lowest by any Premier League team in any season since 2018-19, and the second lowest in any season in the last decade. The direct approach didn’t work for Cardiff, but it appears so far as though it might for Hull.

Newcastle: a younger XI

After a summer of losing key players all in one go and a change of manager to an unproven 38-year-old, it was easy to fear Newcastle might struggle. They’ve made a decent start to a new era defined by regeneration.

After having the sixth-oldest starting XI on average last season, Newcastle’s starting lineups have been younger than any other team in the Premier League this season, 25 years, 5 days. With a 38-year-old manager in Matthias Jaissle who may well have his best years ahead of him, the future looks bright at St James’ Park.

Chelsea: goal chaos

In their first two games under Xabi Alonso Chelsea gave off the brief impression they might be very, very good straight away, but three disappointing results in a row since have implied it may have been a false dawn. What appears in no doubt is that this team is incredibly entertaining.

Their five games have produced a truly incredible 22 goals, the most in the Premier League this season. More striking is that they have become only the 10th team in Premier League history to both score, 10, and concede, 12, double figures in their first five games of a season. Promisingly, four of the previous nine, including each of the last three — Chelsea 2019-20, Liverpool 2020-21, Aston Villa 2023-24 — have gone on to finish in the top four.

Ipswich: late drama

Ipswich have shown on their Premier League return that they are worth watching right until the final whistle. In the space of five games so far they have made it halfway to the Premier League record for 90th-minute winners in a season.