Fulham-Palace 2-3: twenty-four box entries to four, and the side with four wins it

The verdict, before the numbers

At Craven Cottage, Crystal Palace came from behind twice to win 3-2. It is Pierre Sage's first win of the season; for Álvaro Arbeloa, in the Fulham dugout, it is a third straight defeat.

The scoreboard says a match on a knife edge. The territorial statistics say a one-sided match. And the figure that really matters says a third thing altogether, which is the correct one.

Twenty-four to four

Let us start with the number that jumps out.

Box entries: Fulham 24, Crystal Palace 4.

Six times as many. Fulham completed twenty-four passes inside their opponents' final twenty metres; Palace four. And they had twenty-five shots to nine.

The press tells the same story: Fulham 13.8 PPDA, Palace 26.5. Palace let Fulham make almost twenty-seven passes before disturbing them. They sat deep, gave up the pitch, waited.

So far it looks like the standard match of the weekend: territory against result. Except it is not, because there is a second number that turns everything around.

Nine shots, five big chances

Here is the line that explains the match, and it is not the box entries one.

Big chances — attempts from positions worth at least 30% — Fulham 2, Crystal Palace 5.

Palace had nine shots in total and five of those nine were real chances. Fulham had twenty-five and only two were.

Put another way: more than half of Palace's attempts came from clean positions. Fewer than one in ten of Fulham's did.

Palace's chances, in order:

Nketiah, 22nd minute: 0.53. Saved. Mitchell, 34th: 0.40. Goal. Pino, 53rd: 0.42. Wide. Khalaili, 76th: 0.35. Blocked. Chilwell, 76th: 0.39. Goal.

Fulham's are two: Castagne in the 32nd (0.49, saved) and Palacios in the 41st (0.54, goal). The rest — twenty-three attempts — are worth less than a goal and a half between them.

It is exactly the same flaw we saw in two other matches this weekend: Roma with thirty-eight shots and none above 0.37, Bayern with twenty-two box entries and none above 0.37. Enormous volume, low quality.

With one difference: Roma won in the 93rd, Bayern drew 0-0, and Fulham lost. Same problem, three different outcomes. It is the best way to understand how much chance matters across ninety minutes.

Palace's three goals

They are worth telling, because the detail is not one you see often.

All three were scored by left-backs.

Tyrick Mitchell equalised in the 34th with a firm right-footed strike at the near post, played in behind by Nketiah — a chance worth 0.40. He then got the second equaliser off a deflected effort, the kind of goal the model cannot value reliably because the deflection changes everything.

And in the 76th Ben Chilwell, in his first match since rejoining Palace, volleyed home the winner: 0.39 expected goals.

Two full-backs, three goals. Against a side that had spent the match attacking.

The round of the away teams

There is one last figure worth having, and it covers the whole of Saturday's Premier League.

In four of the seven matches played on Saturday, the away side took home one point from performances worth nearly two:

Bournemouth at Newcastle: 1 point from 2.07 expected. Aston Villa at Hull: 1 from 2.03. Tottenham at Nottingham Forest: 1 from 1.93. Sunderland at Brentford: 1 from 1.80.

Four away sides who between them left almost four points on the pitch. And the only one who took more than they were worth is Palace: three points from 1.08 expected.

It is not a pattern that means anything over the distance — it is seven matches — but for one afternoon it happened that the visiting side nearly always deserved more.

The honest bit

Fulham did not play badly, they played incompletely. Twenty-five shots and twenty-four box entries are the numbers of a side in control. The problem is that of those twenty-five shots, only two started from a position you actually score from.

Palace stole nothing. With five big chances to two, only one side clearly created better, even though they had the ball far less. Total expected goals (2.88 to 2.36) say a balanced match; big chances say Palace.

And there is a general lesson in this round. In three different matches, three sides spent ninety minutes inside the opposition box without ever building the real chance. One won in the 93rd, one drew 0-0, one lost 3-2. Volume puts you in a position to win; it does not win for you.

Check for yourself. In the Meritometro you will find the verdict on every Premier League match based on chances rather than results, and in the Nerd Zone you can go back through Fulham-Crystal Palace shot by shot, with the value of each attempt.