Recent Premier League games have been full of goals scored from pressing and mistakes by players trying to play out from the back. We ask whether teams should be taking fewer risks with their build-up play as a result.
There are a few things about modern-day football that really rile supporters up.
Time-wasting; failing to beat the first man with a corner, or worse, taking a corner short; diving; Mikel Arteta. The list goes on – football fans are very, very good at finding something to moan about.
Plenty of fans get particularly annoyed at their team for playing out from the back.
Several factors have led to the point we are now at, where every Premier League team will try to play out from the back at least some – if not all – of the time.
Changes to the laws of the game, the influence of Pep Guardiola and the increase in the technical standard of the average Premier League player have all played their part. And when teams play it short, it is because their managers have concluded that doing so is worth the risk; that they have more chance of creating goalscoring chances by keeping hold of the ball – even at the wrong end of the pitch – than they do by lumping it forward and hoping to win a second ball.
The problem – from the perspective of fans who are minded to prefer avoiding risks like short passes close to your own goal – is that when it goes wrong, it often goes spectacularly wrong. It looks really, really bad, and there is also a specific individual – the one who misplaced a risky pass under the instruction of their manager – who can be blamed.
Apparently avoidable mistake + someone to shout at = angry football fans.
After a weekend of Premier League football filled with errors by players trying to play out from the back, plenty of fans may be asking if doing so really is worth the risk.
This weekend alone, Tyler Dibling scored for Southampton against Ipswich following a high turnover (defined as winning the ball back within 40 metres of the opposition’s goal line); Reiss Nelson pounced on Bruno Guimarães’ misplaced pass to net Fulham’s third against Newcastle; Dominic Solanke scored his first Tottenham goal following James Maddison’s interception of Ethan Pinnock’s poor pass as Brentford tried to play through the Spurs press; Matheus Cunha put Wolves into a shock lead at Aston Villa after intercepting Diego Carlos’ wayward pass, before Ollie Watkins equalised also from a high turnover.
On top of those goals, there were a few huge chances that were wasted following a high turnover, most notably Fabian Schär’s miss at Fulham from a chance worth 0.38 xG – the highest-quality missed chance from a high turnover this season. Across London, Brentford’s Bryan Mbeumo was guilty of missing a chance worth 0.32 xG – the third-best quality chance that has been missed following a high turnover this season – after Spurs goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario played his way into trouble. At Southampton, Ipswich’s Leif Davis was the guilty party after missing a very good chance (0.19 xG) following a high turnover.
With so many teams now choosing to play out from the back, there’s even more reason to work on pressing effectively. Teams will give opponents more opportunities than ever before to press high and win the ball close to their goal, so the best teams in the country have even more reason to polish and perfect their out-of-possession approach when deep in opposition territory. The best teams press relentlessly and suffocate opponents, and are getting the opportunity to press against just about everyone.
The success that teams are having both lower down the Premier League and down the Football League has led to the majority of top-flight teams now consistently playing out from the back. When teams come up from the Championship, they are sticking to the approach that got them promoted because they have squads built to play that way.
Burnley were criticised last season for doing exactly that, when many thought manager Vincent Kompany was being unrealistic in expecting his players to be able to play in the Premier League the way they had played in the Championship. They were relegated without much fuss.
This week in the EFL Cup, Championship side Watford and League One side Bolton conceded goals after losing the ball while playing out from the back against Manchester City and Arsenal. Both goals seemed pretty avoidable.
None of this has put Southampton off when it came to being back in the Premier League. Only Tottenham (88.2%) and Manchester United (88.0%) are taking a higher proportion of their goal-kicks into their own penalty area in Premier League games this season than Saints (87.9%), and only three teams have had more possession than them (60.4%).
That’s because they, and so many other teams, have had joy when playing out from the back. And when it works, it looks so good that the risk all becomes all worth it. Russell Martin’s team were rightly lauded for their performances and for some of the incredible team goals they scored on the way to winning promotion through the play-offs last season.
But the Premier League is a different beast, and the early stages of this season and the numbers from last term suggest pressing is getting even more effective, and teams who play out from the back are running into more trouble. And not just the promoted clubs.
We are seeing 2.5 high turnovers that end in a shot per game in 2024-25 – the second–highest rate in any of the previous 10 Premier League seasons (that’s since 2014-15 – when Opta have this data), after 2023-24 (2.8 shot-ending high turnovers per game). Of those, 0.3 per game are ending in a goal this season, only marginally down on last season, which again produced the highest rate in the last decade.
The proportion of shot-ending high turnovers that are being successfully converted into goals is higher this season – at 13.0% – than in any other season on record.
It suggests that either players are finishing their chances better than previously following high turnovers, or pressing (and teams’ subsequent attacking) has improved and is creating higher-quality chances. The average xG value of shots following a high turnover is 0.11 in the Premier League this season – the highest it has been in any season on record, suggesting teams are getting better at creating better chances after winning it high up the pitch. The numbers suggest playing out from the back comes with more risk than ever before.
Not all high turnovers are the result of an error and not all errors result in a high turnover, but they are certainly linked and recent weeks have seen plenty of players to blame for poor passes in the build-up phase. The current campaign is seeing 0.48 errors leading to an opposition goal per game, which is higher than any other season the last 10 years.
It’s also significantly higher than last year (0.32 per game), almost double that of 2020-21 (0.25), and more than double that of 2021-22 (0.2). It’s early days in 2024-25 so things might not continue this way, particularly as players grow more used to playing with their new teammates, but right now, mistakes are being made at a record rate, and it looks very much like pressing is to blame.
There are some other numbers that those who dislike their team playing out from the back may find interesting.
In the Premier League this season, there have been just two shots for a team within 30 seconds of them taking a goal-kick short, neither of which resulted in a goal, but eight shots have been conceded following a short goal-kick. Two of those have resulted in goals being conceded.
This follows a similar pattern to last season, when short goal-kicks led to 63 shots and nine goals for the teams taking them, but 86 shots and 12 goals conceded.
There are benefits to playing out from the back and to taking goal-kicks short, not least because it’s possible to create space higher up the pitch by drawing the opposition deeper into your territory. And you don’t have to score or create a chance within 30 seconds of taking a goal-kick for it to have been worthwhile going short.
But if you don’t get the ball into space and get stuck in your own third, then you can get into real trouble, real quick. That is even more the case given the quality, coordination and efficiency of pressing systems in the modern game.
Playing out from the back isn’t for every fan, and perhaps the truth right now is it shouldn’t be for every Premier League team either.
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