The Spanish league is a remarkable one. From the outside, it looks like it isn’t very competitive, but I tend to disagree. Many clubs are rivals of each other and when the games are played over the weekends, it does feel like a quality league. That’s one of the reasons why I’m delving into the best goal-scoring teams, to get an idea of who is overperforming and who is underperforming.
The data used for this analysis comes from Opta via FBRef and can be seen here. I’ve selected the actual goals scored and the expected goals, to assess whether a team has been underperforming or overperforming. This specific data was collected on January 11th, 2023.
Liga F: goals scored
In the image above you can see a scatterplot of all teams in Liga F. It shows us how teams are performing with goals scored (GF) and goals conceded (GA).
We see that there are three teams that do very well with scoring goals and have a minimal of goals conceded. These are Barcelona, Real Madrid and Levante in the top right corner. On the contrary, there are three teams that really don’t do well: Villareal, Alaves and Levante Planas – they have conceded over 30 goals.
Liga F: expected goals scored
In the image above you can see a scatterplot of all teams in Liga F. It shows us how teams are performing with expected goals for (xG) and expected goals against (xGA).
We see that there are two teams that do very well in the expected goals, these are Barcelona and Levante. Real Madrid scores 5th after Barcelona, Levante, Atletico Madrid and Real Sociedad. Those who concede the most expected goals are Real Betis, Sporting Huelva, Levante Planas and Alaves.
Liga F: Goal differences
How do we measure overperformance or underperformance of expected goals/goals? We can do this by looking at the goal difference and the expected goal difference.
In the bar graph above you can see the metric of Goals difference – Expected goal difference. This measures (goals scored – goals conceded) – (expected goals for – expected goals against) and we can measure overperformance or underperformance. In other words, whether the goals scored and conceded were less/more than the expected goals.
Real Madrid does best as it overperformed the most looking at these metrics. They have a goal difference of 17,20 goals more than their expected goal difference would suggest. Barcelona follows with 14,20 diffence and then Levante with 6,10 diffence.
Villareal underperforms the most with a 17,10 goal difference fewer than the expected goal difference would suggest. Alaves has -10,30 and Alhama has -6,80.
