La Liga, all sixteen games: Villarreal created 3.54 goals at Atletico and left with a single point
The verdict, before the numbers
La Liga started before the rest and already has sixteen matches on the board: a full opening round and six games of the second.
The overall picture is the best in Europe: 39 goals against 44.02 expected, which is just 0.31 goals wasted per match. For comparison, Serie A throws away almost a whole one. Here, what gets created gets scored.
Which makes the two or three matches where it did not happen all the more notable.
The strongest away performance in Europe
Atletico Madrid 2-2 Villarreal · xG 0.74 - 3.54
Villarreal went to the Metropolitano and built chances worth more than three and a half goals, against Atletico's seventy-four hundredths. They came away with one point.
For scale: 3.54 expected goals is the highest away output recorded across all four European leagues. No side playing away from home created as much. And Villarreal did it against Atletico Madrid.
A draw in the table. In practice, a match won and never collected.
Barcelona give nothing away
Elche 0-5 Barcelona · xG 1.18 - 4.25
Five goals from 4.25 expected: near-perfect conversion of a dominant performance. This is not an inflated scoreline, Barcelona created four goals and scored five.
Worth noting the other side of it: Elche still produced 1.18 expected goals. This was not a passive team, it was a team overrun by a better one.
Sevilla win twice while creating less
Here is La Liga's most interesting case, and it involves a single team.
Athletic Club 1-3 Sevilla · xG 1.46 - 0.97
Sevilla scored three goals from chances worth less than one. Gap: +2.03, the second highest in Europe behind Inter. In Bilbao, away from home.
And it was not a one-off: on the opening weekend they had already beaten Rayo Vallecano 2-1, that time with even numbers (2.02 against 1.91).
Six points from six. Finishing of a sharpness that, if it holds, is a genuine weapon; if it does not, the table will correct itself quickly.
Alaves play two opposite matches
Alaves 3-0 Getafe · xG 2.29 - 0.26, a ferocious press (PPDA 6.2), total control, a clear and deserved win.
Rayo Vallecano 1-1 Alaves · xG 0.57 - 2.22, five days later, away from home, Alaves create almost four times as much as Rayo and take a single point.
Two fine performances, four points. With a little more precision it would have been six.
The other eleven
| Match | Result | xG | What the numbers say | |---|---|---|---| | Sevilla - Rayo Vallecano | 2-1 | 2.02 - 1.91 | Almost perfectly even, settled by fine margins. | | Racing Santander - Villarreal | 2-2 | 1.96 - 0.77 | Newly promoted Racing create more than double and do not win. | | Espanyol - Levante | 3-0 | 2.01 - 0.20 | A clean domination: Levante produced twenty hundredths of a goal. | | Deportivo - Elche | 1-1 | 0.34 - 1.59 | Elche created almost five times as much as Deportivo. A point given away. | | Atletico Madrid - Malaga | 2-0 | 1.34 - 0.23 | A win that adds up, without overexerting themselves. | | Real Betis - Real Sociedad | 1-0 | 1.70 - 1.14 | A proper contest settled by one goal. No anomaly. | | Valencia - Celta Vigo | 0-0 | 0.42 - 0.54 | The most sterile game in La Liga: less than one expected goal between them. | | Espanyol - Real Madrid | 1-2 | 1.02 - 2.56 | Real deserved it: two and a half times the chances. | | Getafe - Racing Santander | 1-0 | 0.98 - 1.17 | Getafe won while creating less. The third such case in La Liga. | | Osasuna - Levante | 0-0 | 0.89 - 1.27 | Levante create more away from home and fail to score. | | Malaga - Deportivo | 1-1 | 1.36 - 1.13 | A fair draw between two newly promoted sides. |
The honest bottom line
La Liga is the league where, so far, the results most closely resemble what happened on the pitch. Only three matches out of sixteen were won by the side that had created less, the lowest proportion in Europe.
Two names to note, for opposite reasons:
Villarreal, who produced the continent's best away performance and have a single point to show for it. If they keep creating like that, the table will catch up with them.
Sevilla, on maximum points with finishing that is off the scale. It is the kind of start that thrills in September and needs checking in November.
Check on your team. The Meritometro has the verdict on every La Liga match, and in the Nerd Zone you can run the numbers on any statistic.