The Premier League is really defined by long term stability rather than short term power plays. Looking over the last few seasons of completed league results reveals some clear trends in the way points get awarded: things like draw distribution and recurring match patterns that make up the league's DNA.
This page looks at the history and what happens at the end of the season - how all the teams performed and all that.
You can look at the finished Premier League matches and you'll see that the way things turn out is pretty stable:
So, nearly a quarter of all matches are level, but only a tiny handful are complete stalemates with no goals. That just confirms that most draws are pretty intense games - not just teams sitting back and defending a 0-0 scoreline.
The league on average has just a bit over two and a half goals per game - enough to make for some decent and exciting games, but not so many that it's totally out of control.
When you look at the history of Premier League results, there are some clear patterns that show up over and over:
The dominance of 1-1 shows just how even the Premier League is - nobody ever really has things all their own way.
It's a bit different from some other leagues where top teams just hammer smaller ones all the time. In the Premier League, it's much more common to get a one-goal win or a 1-1 draw.
And that doesn't just happen between the top teams like Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool. It happens just as often in games between mid-table teams or newer teams trying to make a go of it in the league.
When you look at how many goals are scored in a game and add them all up, the numbers show that most matches tend to have a pretty good number of goals:
So, just about half of all matches have exactly 2 or 3 goals in them. There are plenty of higher scoring games, but most of the time it's in that 2-3 range.
The Premier League has a pretty healthy 24.7% draw rate which shows that all the teams are pretty evenly matched.
It's worth noting:
This all suggests that how evenly the league is balanced isn't because teams are all playing defensive football and not scoring many goals. It's because teams are all roughly equal, and that's what makes for all those draws.
One of the things that really sets the Premier League apart is that even the teams at the bottom of the table tend to score a lot of goals.
We can see this if we look at the results of matches involving top teams like Manchester United or Chelsea or smaller teams like Tottenham Hotspur:
This makes the Premier League really different from some other European leagues where top teams just run away with everything and nobody else ever gets a look in.
So, what makes the Premier League the way it is? There are a few key factors:
All these things together mean that the Premier League is a really level playing field - nobody ever has things their own way for too long, and that makes for a lot of really exciting games.