Our latest article looks at Premier League defences, asking if there is an increase in clean sheet potential in the second half of a campaign.
This was an idea suggested by Fantasy Football Scout regular Ginkapo FPL, who asked:
Do defences still get tighter after Christmas? This was one of the rules of thumbs developed a decade ago. Is it still true? Do scoring habits change?
We’ll be working our way through more article requests during the ongoing downtime and readers can still submit their proposals using the form found via the link below.
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For this piece, we’ll be looking at the figures before and after Christmas and analysing the data to see if scoring habits do indeed fluctuate depending on the time of year.
We will pay attention to the numbers from the last nine seasons, including the current campaign, to see if the trends are a yearly occurrence or indeed if there is little to be read into the figures.
Overall Defensive Data
Firstly, let’s look at the overall defensive data over the last nine seasons (which is as far back as our Opta records go).
| Season | Goals Conceded | Clean Sheets |
| 2019/20 (so far) | 784 | 150 |
| 2018/19 | 1,072 | 207 |
| 2017/18 | 1,018 | 226 |
| 2016/17 | 1,064 | 214 |
| 2015/16 | 1,026 | 215 |
| 2014/15 | 975 | 224 |
| 2013/14 | 1,052 | 232 |
| 2012/13 | 1,063 | 200 |
| 2011/12 | 1,066 | 206 |
With there having been fewer matches played in the currently suspended 2019/20 campaign, we’ll look at averages per team, per match in the below table in order to level the playing field.
| Season | Goals Conceded | Clean Sheets |
| 2019/20 (so far) | 1.3611 | 0.2604 |
| 2018/19 | 1.4105 | 0.2723 |
| 2017/18 | 1.3395 | 0.2973 |
| 2016/17 | 1.4000 | 0.2816 |
| 2015/16 | 1.3500 | 0.2829 |
| 2014/15 | 1.2829 | 0.2947 |
| 2013/14 | 1.3842 | 0.3053 |
| 2012/13 | 1.3987 | 0.2632 |
| 2011/12 | 1.4026 | 0.2710 |
The above numbers might not mean much at first glance or look too different year on year but extrapolated over the course of a campaign, they start to give a clearer picture.
If we continue on with the current rate of clean sheets in 2019/20 (0.2604 per team, per match), we’ll see only around 198 of them by the time the season draws to a close.
That would be the lowest total recorded since our data compiling began in 2011/12.
Of course, what we’re attempting to decipher below is whether that rate of shut-outs is expected to be uniform across the whole of the season or not.
Do defences get tighter after Christmas?
For the purposes of this analysis, we are taking “after Christmas” to mean the first Gameweek after the New Year’s Day set of matches (and the FA Cup third round) onwards, when the fixture congestion eases considerably.
The starting points are therefore Gameweek 21 for 2011/12, 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17, Gameweek 22 for 2012/13, 2018/19 and 2019/20, and Gameweek 23 for 2017/18.
As before, to balance things out we have provided averages per team, per match.
Before Christmas
Totals
| Season | Goals Conceded | Clean Sheets |
| 2019/20 (so far) | 584 | 100 |
| 2018/19 | 598‬ | 111 |
| 2017/18 | 586‬ | 140 |
| 2016/17 | 571 | 99 |
| 2015/16 | 516 | 120‬ |
| 2014/15 | 525‬ | 112 |
| 2013/14 | 533 | 123 |
| 2012/13 | 597 | 103 |
| 2011/12 | 566‬ | 102 |
Averages Per Team, Per Match
| Season | Goals Conceded | Clean Sheets |
| 2019/20 (so far) | 1.3971 | 0.2392 |
| 2018/19 | 1.4238 | 0.2643 |
| 2017/18 | 1.3318 | 0.3182 |
| 2016/17 | 1.4275‬ | 0.2475 |
| 2015/16 | 1.2900 | 0.3000 |
| 2014/15 | 1.3125 | 0.2800 |
| 2013/14 | 1.3325 | 0.3075 |
| 2012/13 | 1.4351 | 0.2476 |
| 2011/12 | 1.4150 | 0.2550 |
After Christmas
Totals:
| Season | Goals Conceded | Clean Sheets |
| 2019/20 (so far) | 200 | 50 |
| 2018/19 | 474 | 96 |
| 2017/18 | 432 | 86 |
| 2016/17 | 493 | 115 |
| 2015/16 | 510 | 95 |
| 2014/15 | 450 | 112 |
| 2013/14 | 519 | 109 |
| 2012/13 | 466 | 97 |
| 2011/12 | 500 | 104 |
Averages Per Team, Per Match
| Season | Goals Conceded | Clean Sheets |
| 2019/20 (so far) | 1.2658 | 0.3165 |
| 2018/19 | 1.3941 | 0.2824 |
| 2017/18 | 1.3500 | 0.2688 |
| 2016/17 | 1.3694 | 0.3194 |
| 2015/16 | 1.4167 | 0.2639 |
| 2014/15 | 1.2500 | 0.3111 |
| 2013/14 | 1.4417 | 0.3028 |
| 2012/13 | 1.3547 | 0.2820 |
| 2011/12 | 1.3889 | 0.2889 |
All of the above is tough to process with the naked eye but a graphic representation of how the whole-season, pre-Christmas and post-Christmas averages compare makes things a little easier to digest.
Goals Conceded: Per Team, Per Match
Clean Sheets: Per Team, Per Match
In six of the nine seasons studied, Premier League defences became tighter both in terms of goals conceded and clean sheets registered after the Christmas fixtures were over.
That doesn’t provide enough evidence to say that top-flight backlines are more attractive from a Fantasy perspective in the second half of any given campaign, but it has been the case so far in 2019/20 and in two-thirds of the seasons analysed.
A third of this season’s clean sheets have indeed arrived from Gameweek 22 onwards.
There are a number of possible reasons why fewer goals could be scored after New Year’s Day, from teams trying to close down title wins or secure safety by grinding out narrow victories to defences gradually becoming more in sync with one another as the season progresses.
New manager bounces, depending on when they fall, could also partially influence the figures, while the early-season swagger that certain promoted teams exhibit can give way to a more pragmatic approach as the months go by (this has, to an extent, happened with Norwich City this season).
As we have seen, though, the above results are a mixed bag and hardly irrefutable proof that the old hypothesis about post-Christmas defences rings true.
We will follow up this piece soon with a look at defensive data from the final quarter of Premier League campaigns past, given that only Gameweeks 30-38 remain of 2019/20.
Whether any kind of statistical analysis is relevant for this unique present-day season is another question, of course, given that top-flight players and teams may well end up having had an enforced break of three months or more before they kick a ball again.
