We revealed earlier in the season that Premier League teams were broadly playing more directly than before. Now we’re beyond the halfway stage, we’ve looked over the numbers again.
It’s no secret that the Premier League has been a little different this season.
Back in September, after the first 50 games in England’s top flight, we revealed the Opta data that proved several teams had begun the 2025-26 campaign generally playing a more direct style. At that point in the season there had been fewer passes than usual, as well as more long balls, more goals from set-pieces, and so many long throws we could barely count them.
We said we’d revisit it later in the season to see if these were long-term trends or just fads, and decided that 210 games into the campaign was as good a time as any to take another look. Full disclosure, we did want to check them after a nice, round 200 games, but the fixture calendar frankly didn’t give us enough time.
If you haven’t read our previous piece, or have absolutely no idea what we’re talking about and were blissfully unaware that anything was different this season, you can check out our findings from a few months ago below:
Premier League Directness
Premier LeagueMore Long Balls, Fewer High Turnovers, and Set-Piece Reliance: Are Premier League Teams Going More Direct?
4 months ago David SegarSo, without further ado, here are the latest numbers that indicate whether the Premier League is still as direct as it was back in September.
Passing Preferences
One of the more eyebrow-raising stats after 50 games this season was that Premier League games were averaging fewer passes compared to previous seasons up to that point, and by some distance.
The average in the 2023-24 season was 941.0 passes per game (between both teams), which reduced to 893.4 last season.
After 50 games in 2025-26, there was an average of 849.1 passes per game, the lowest since 2010-11 (820.1).
Now, after 210 games, that average is up to 873.3, still fewer than last season and the lowest in the Premier League since 2012-13 (868.7), but a lot closer than it was.
Manchester City are the main team to have increased their passing frequency. Having had an average of 476.6 per game in their first five outings, that has risen to a league-leading 570.9 since.
Liverpool have also seen a notable increase, going from 508.2 passes per game to 549.8, while Arsenal have raised theirs from 464.8 to 492.3, though it should be noted they played against Manchester United, Liverpool and Man City in their first five games, which could partly explain their initial low average.
Chelsea have actually dropped from 551.8 passes per game to 515.6, Tottenham have gone from 475.2 to 413.8, while Nottingham Forest have less surprisingly dipped from 502.4 after five games, to just 436.0 with Sean Dyche now at the helm.
The overall increase in passes is not reflected in as many teams’ passes per sequence as you might expect, though. We analysed in September that 11 of the 17 ever-present Premier League sides since the start of last season had a lower passes-per-sequence average than the previous campaign. Since then, the average has gone up for 10 Premier League teams, while it has dropped for the other 10.
Man City are again one of the teams with a notable change since their first five games, which makes sense as they have significantly increased their overall passing numbers. They have gone from 3.97 passes per sequence on average earlier in the season to 4.69 now, though their direct speed upfield has not changed at all since then (1.61 metres per second), so they have clearly been able to adapt without compromising on their speed of play.
You can see from the team style comparison graphic how many sides are playing in a similar way, with around half the league clustered closely together just below the median average for passes per sequence and around or just over the median for direct speed upfield.
Another shift we found in terms of passing sequences in the Premier League earlier this season was that they had lasted almost a full second less than in 2024-25 (9.6 secs), while the average progress upfield had reduced by half a metre (12.1m), with average sequence progress as short as it had been in any of last 10 seasons. That remains the case, with the average progress upfield still the same, and the average time of them being just 9.5 seconds now. That is despite the increase in passes per game overall.
The amount of long balls (passes that travel at least 32 metres) per game was up at the start of the season, which is one of the main reasons why the league felt like it was transitioning to a more direct style. But does the increase in passes since then mean teams have reduced their number of long balls attempted?
In terms of percentage, yes, but just looking at average long balls per game in the Premier League, not really. In fact, the average has barely moved. It was 99.7 per game in September and now stands at 99.6. So, teams are still sending it long quite often, and more than they used to – the average was 93.4 last season – but this does suggest that the additional passes since the early part of the season in the overall average are shorter ones.
We also told you that, of outfielders, Bournemouth’s Marcos Senesi had played the most long balls this season in the Premier League after Matchday 5, and that remains the case. In total, 266 of his 1,204 passes have been classified as ‘long’, more than any other non-goalkeeper.
Are High Turnovers Back?
We also looked at high turnovers in our previous article, which were down at 11.5 per game, the fewest in the last 10 seasons. That has increased to 13.3 per game after Matchday 21, still down on last season’s 14.6 but seemingly heading back in that direction. This could be because of the increase in shorter passes in the last few months, allowing more opportunities for pressing.
The percentage of high turnovers culminating in a shot had reduced from 16.4% last season to 14.9% after five games this, but it has now risen back up to 16.1%, so it appears teams are getting more confident in their pressing and being more productive once they have the ball back.
Set-Piece Prevalence
Arguably the biggest takeaway of the 2025-26 Premier League campaign to this point has been set-pieces and how integral they have become in deciding games.
After Matchday 5, we noted that 25% of goals had come from set-pieces (excluding penalties). That was more than any of the last 10 Premier League seasons. Over the previous nine Premier League campaigns, the highest percentage of goals coming from non-penalty set-pieces was 23.9% in 2016-17. It was 20.6% in 2024-25 and 19.8% in 2023-24.
We anticipated that it could come down closer to those averages with a bigger sample of games, but it has actually increased. Of the 587 goals in the Premier League this season, 166 have been from either corners, free-kicks or throw-ins. That is a whopping 28.3%.
Of those goals, 105 have come from corners, meaning we have had a goal from a corner on average every other game this season (0.5 corner goals per game), up from 0.44 earlier in the campaign, and 0.35 per game last season.
That could be because so many are being sent into the box. We had already seen a lower proportion of corners taken short than usual after 50 games (13.5%, down from 18% last season), and that has reduced further still, with just 11.3% of corner kicks in the Premier League this season being taken short.
Then there’s goal-kicks, which we pointed out earlier in the campaign were being sent long (ending in the opponent’s attacking half) more often than in recent seasons (48.4%), and it has climbed very slightly again, now up at 48.8%.
We told you that Burnley’s Martin Dúbravka was responsible for a lot of them, and that’s still the case. In total, 193 of his 233 goal kicks have ended in the opponents’ half (82.3%), though other goalkeepers have started following suit. Sunderland’s Robin Roefs has kicked 97 of his 112 goal kicks into the opponent’s half (86.6%), while West Ham’s Alphonse Areola has done the same with 114 of his 151 efforts (75.5%).
Long-Throw Lovers
This was arguably the most notable of the early-season trends; the comeback of long throws.
Rory Delap may be long retired, but his ball-flinging spirit lives on in the Premier League, with several teams unashamedly turning to long throws as a genuine method of creating chances.
There were an average of 1.52 long throws sent into the opposition’s box per game (a throw that travels at least 20 metres and ends in the opposition’s box) last season, which had more than doubled in 2025-26 after 50 games, with an average of 3.44. Indeed, it was more than double the rate of any other season in the previous 10 years, with 1.67 per game in 2018-19 the highest rate before this campaign.
Many perhaps expected it to be a short-term trend that faded out, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. After 210 matches, it has risen even further to 3.97 per game.
The potency of them has also increased. There was an average of a goal from a long throw into the box every 12.5 games earlier this season, significantly up from one every 27 games on average last season. With 18 goals coming from long throws into the box in the first 210 matches, the average is now one every 11.7 games.
Brentford still lead the way in terms of volume, with exactly 100 throws taken that have been sent into the opposition box. Michael Kayode must have sore arms by now, having taken 94 of them, at least 17 more than any other Premier League player.
Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City (all 5) and West Ham (6) have all dabbled, but are seemingly reluctant to commit to taking them. That said, Antoine Semenyo took 47 of them for Bournemouth this season before his move to City, so he could perhaps be a weapon for Pep Guardiola in that sense also.
Former Liverpool throw-in coach Thomas Grønnemark confirmed recently that he is now working with Arsenal, so expect the Premier League leaders to be focusing even more on launching efforts into the penalty area. If it works for them as well as their corner routines, don’t be surprised to see other teams increase their throw dependency as well.
So, there you have it. While some of those early trends haven’t quite stood the test of time, most have and so it seems long passes, set-piece goals and long throws are here to stay for at least a while longer.
This is not to say that everyone is playing the same way, as the team style graphic shows, but certainly more teams are adapting their approach in a way we arguably haven’t seen for a while.
The rise in passes per game is one of the more notable statistics, especially with some of the bigger clubs increasing their averages as the season has gone on, suggesting they have worked out how to adapt to the early-season changes in approach from many of their opponents.
However, the further rise in set-piece goals and long throws also indicates that the fine margins and easy wins they can bring are only increasing in their attractiveness to several teams, so it is unlikely we will see those numbers shrink any time soon.
The fairly abrupt change in approach across the Premier League is something that has dominated many conversations this season, and it’s interesting to see that it’s not only broadly continued, but some of the more surprising data from earlier in the season has become even more extreme.
And frankly, as data enthusiasts, we quite like to see it.
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Premier League Tactical Trends: How Passing, Set-Pieces, Long Throws Have Changed in 2025-26 Opta Analyst.
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