In 2025-26, the Premier League is witnessing more late goals and winners than any other season in the competition’s history. We assess the potential reasons behind the increase.
If Opta were to collect data on the number of match-going football fans who leave Premier League games before the final whistle, there’s every chance we’d soon start to see a decline in the numbers.
That’s because 2025-26 is producing more late drama than any other season before it.
Over the last few years, with more time added on at the end of matches, there have been more late goals. Seven of the 10 latest goals on record in the Premier League (since 2006-07) have come since the start of 2023-24, when new directives were introduced to increase the amount of injury time in a bid to combat time-wasting. The knowledge that when the clock passes 90:00, there could still be 12 or 13 minutes of game time to be played gives every fan hope that their team might yet turn things around. Leaving a game early carries more risk of missing a late goal than it used to, and this season there has been more action than usual in the closing stages of Premier League matches.
But while games are longer these days, that fact alone doesn’t explain what has happened this term. The 2025-26 campaign is producing more goals in the 90th minute or later than any other season in Premier League history, but there’s more: a higher proportion of games are being decided by 90th-minute winners than ever before.
It’s logical that longer games would lead to more late action, but even so, this season has been extreme. Games are lasting over 100 minutes on average for only the second time in Premier League history, but they are still more than a minute shorter than they were two seasons ago, in 2023-24 – the first season after the aforementioned changes to time-wasting rules.
And yet, we’ve seen more late goals this season than ever before on average. A goal is being scored in the final ‘minute’ (90th minute or later) every 2.9 games, which is more often than any other Premier League season, just ahead of 2023-24 (every 3.4 games).
We are only seven matchdays into the season, so there’s every chance that this doesn’t last, but the numbers have risen so much that it is still worth looking into.
In 2023-24, more goals were scored than in any other season. Games were longer, and so more goals were scored late on in games, too.
The difference this season is that goals are being scored at their lowest rate (2.6 goals per game) in more than a decade. With that in mind, games being longer shouldn’t necessarily mean an increase in injury-time goals, and yet they are more common than ever before.
It follows that this season has the highest proportion of all goals scored in the 90th minute or later (13.2%) – at least 4.2% higher than any other season (with 2023-24 producing the second-highest rate).
Jonathan Manuel / Data AnalystIt is difficult to explain with any certainty why this is the case. Why are we seeing fewer goals overall but more 90th-minute goals?
It may just be a quirk of being seven games into the season. It may be that teams are fitter than ever before and, with deeper squads, they are making better use of being able to make five substitutions. Perhaps the intensity of the football being played this season means defenders, who are less likely to have been substituted, are tiring late on in games more than before.
We’ve also seen a widespread and increased focus on set-pieces across the board in the Premier League this season – a topic we’ve covered in depth on these pages – and perhaps tired defences are struggling to deal with more thought-out set-play routines late on in games. This season has indeed seen an increase in 90th-minute set-piece goals, from one every 15 games in 2024-25 to one every 10 games in 2025-26.
Another explanation is that the lower rate of goals has meant games are tighter this season than they have been in recent years. There has been more at stake during second-half injury time than in other recent seasons, so teams are encouraged to push forward for the win late on.
That may have been part of the reason that, as well as more goals at the end of games, we’re also seeing a huge increase in the number of 90th-minute winners.
Of the 24 last-minute goals scored in the Premier League this season, 10 have turned a draw into a win. As a proportion, that’s 41.7%, the highest in Premier League history.
Most incredibly, 14.3% of all games this season have been decided by a 90th-minute winner, which is more than twice as high as any other season in the Premier League era. The highest it has ever been before in any full season is 7.1% in 2023-24, the season in which, as already noted, injury time was at its longest.
Jonathan Manuel / Data AnalystOver the years, Premier League games have steadily produced more and more goals. It follows that the average goal margin between teams in games has gone up. That reached an all-time high in 2023-24 of 1.58. Excluding draws, the average margin of victory was 2.02 that season, which was also the highest the Premier League has ever seen.
However, it’s now at its lowest in a decade, with teams separated by an average of 1.34 goals in 2025-26. It appears, so far at least, that there are no whipping boys at the bottom of the table this term, and big wins are rarer. The last time the average was as low as it now is was 2015-16, when there was no runaway leader and the Premier League’s best teams were so evenly matched that a 5000-1 outsider in Leicester City won the title.
Jonathan Manuel / Data AnalystThat all means that when the fourth official is preparing his board to announce how much additional time will be played, Premier League games are in the balance more often. As a result, there is more on the line late on in games this season, and there is plenty of second-half injury time to find a winner, too.
In the high-stakes world of modern Premier League football, where finishing a few places higher up the table is worth millions in prize money, every result matters. Nowhere is that more the case than right at the top of the table, where every dropped point is pored over relentlessly and analysed to death. That’s partly because there is just so much football coverage these days, but it’s also the result of the best teams winning so many more points than they used to. Seven of the eight highest points totals in 38-game seasons in Premier League history have come in the last decade. Wins are more important than ever. Ninetieth-minute winners are more valuable than ever, too. And they could shape this season’s title race.
Liverpool have already been on both sides of a 90th-minute winner on two occasions this season, having scored in stoppage time in wins over Newcastle (3-2) and Burnley (1-0), before conceding in the last minute of 2-1 defeats to Crystal Palace and Chelsea.
Arsenal won 2-1 at Newcastle thanks to Gabriel Magalhães’ 96th-minute strike, and also rescued a draw against Manchester City with a last-gasp equaliser from Gabriel Martinelli. City haven’t yet scored a 90th-minute winner this season, but if they were to add a few, it might be enough to drag them into the title battle. Without Liverpool’s two late winners, they wouldn’t be, as they are now, within touching distance of top spot.
It’s early days, and this trend might not continue for the whole season, but until it stops, fans in stadiums are advised to stay right until the very end or risk missing something very significant indeed.
Enjoy this? Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You can also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
Why Are Premier League 90th-Minute Winners at an All-Time High? Opta Analyst.
Hence then, the article about why are premier league 90th minute winners at an all time high was published today ( ) and is available on The Analyst ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Why Are Premier League 90th-Minute Winners at an All-Time High? )
Also on site :