My interest was in trying to measure the quality of each team offense and team defense during the previous season. My hypothesis was that in some cases, blowout games masked the true identity of teams. As an example, Newcastle had 44 "Goals For" during the year but 11 came in only two games. I wanted to be able to see the capability of each team's "base" offense or defense. Therefore I needed to create a line that determined which games were to be considered blowouts and which were to be included in the "base" analysis. I made the executive decision that any game with a three goal differential that was not a 3-0 final was a blowout. 4-1 and 5-2 are blowouts but not 3-0.

My reasoning was the number of times teams scored three goals during the season was pretty high (87) making it a somewhat normal occurrence but the number of times teams scored four goals was much lower (28) making it an irregular occurrence. However, games with scores such as 5-4 or 4-2 were not blowouts since the number of goals scored was what was necessary to win with a common spread of one or two goals. If someone wishes to take me on about this logic, be my guest.

In looking at the outcome of my analysis, I think only one or maybe two teams might have a complaint. Manchester City won so many games by blowout (7), that it has to almost be considered a part of their base offense. Tottenham was not far behind with 5 blowout wins. Nevertheless, I am comfortable with my rankings as it shows the inconsistency that plagued Man. City and is not meant to be a ranking of their overall success. The standard EPL table handles that quite nicely without my assistance.

Most teams did not have more than two blowouts and many did not have any. Of specific note, it is interesting that one of the most historically dominant teams, Manchester United, did not have any blowouts all season. Also, the Hammers had the second most prolific base offense and did not have any blowout wins either. Therefore, a consistently proficient offense did not necessarily lead to blowouts (WHU) and the happenstance of a large number of blowouts did not lead to a consistently proficient offense (MC).

Removing the blowouts, the average score of an EPL game last year was 2.08 to 0.61. Out of the 760 games played, 215 (28.2%) were shutouts (including ties 0-0). In 246 (32.4%) of the games, one of the teams scored only one goal (includes all wins, losses, and ties). Therefore, 60.6% of the games during the season had one or both teams score once or fewer.

And now for the team measurements and rankings:

Team Offense (goals/game in non-blow out games)

Leicester........1.730

West Ham......1.711

Arsenal...........1.486

Tottenham......1.455 (second most blowout wins with 5)

Southampton..1.417

Liverpool.........1.324 (third most blowout wins with 4)

Everton...........1.361

Chelsea...........1.314

Man. City.........1.290 (most blowout wins with 7)

Man. United.....1.289

Sunderland......1.263

Bournemouth...1.184

Stoke City.........1.079

Watford.............1.053

Swansea...........1.027

Norwich.............1.026

C. Palace...........0.919

Newcastle..........0.917

W.B.A.................0.895

Aston Villa..........0.711

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Team Defense (goals/game conceded in non-blowout games)

Tottenham.........0.811

Leicester...........0.838

Arsenal.............0.865

Man. City...........0.917

Man. United......0.921

Southampton....1.079

W.B.A...............1.189

West Ham.........1.194

C. Palace..........1.194

Stoke City.........1.229

Watford.............1.243

Swansea...........1.297

Liverpool...........1.316

Sunderland........1.371

Everton..............1.378

Chelsea.............1.395

Newcastle..........1.400

Bournemouth.....1.441 (second most blowout games for loss with 4)

Aston Villa..........1.636 (most blowout games for loss with 5)

Norwich..............1.649

******

If you mix the numbers on the two lists, you come to realize why/how teams sat on the table. Using this analysis, only W. Ham and Sunderland are statistical anomolies by grading out more than one position (+/-) of where they ended the season. W. Ham had more than the normal amount of games that were considered "base" but were borderline to being blowouts. Similarly, Sunderland ended the season with no official blowout wins but more than the average that were borderline as such.

I am glad to share more details of my work if anyone is interested and I am technologically able to do so. It is a beautiful spreadsheet. :-)