May 29 – An analysis of the percentage of points needed to win one of the Big 5 European leagues shows that over the past 20 years championship winning teams have progressively increased the percentage of points available to them.
The research, by the CIES Football Observatory, finds that: “On average, big-5 league champions obtained 69.9% of points for the five-season period between 1999/2000 and 2003/2004. This percentage went up to 73.9% during the following lustrum, to 77.7% between 2010 and 2014, and again up to 80.5% for the last five seasons. This reflects an ongoing trend towards competitive imbalance.”
For the season just finished all Big 5 league winners took more than 75% of the points with Manchester City leading the way with 86% while Barcelona won LaLiga with 76.3%. The fact that Liverpool were just one point behind Man City suggests that while the Premier League makes a big show of its competitive teams (‘there are no easy matches’), the points reality suggests that for the teams at the top most matches are pretty easy.
The record points percentage haul was taken by Juventus in 2013/14 with 89.5% of the points available. At the other extreme is Olympique Lyonnais in 2002/03 with 59.6%.
See the full report at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2018/264/en/
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