The Premier League's best home and worst away team are the same club

Hello and welcome to the Friday grab bag. Before the games and links, I wanted to talk about the massive difference between Brentford’s home and away form, by far the biggest in the Premier League.

Brentford are the best team in the league at home, racking up seven wins, a draw and no losses with a +12 goal differential. Away from home, they’re second-worst, just barely better than Southampton. They’re winless on the road, with 1 draw and 6 losses, to go with a -9 GD.

Their attacking sees a much wilder swing than their defending. Strangely, they seem less willing to cross in their away games, and that might not suit their style. They’re also doing an incredible job of creating great shots off pressing at home, and not doing that at all away.

At the Gtech Stadium, Brentford have generated 6 non-penalty chances of better than 0.5 xG, scoring 5 of them, and they’re two-for-two on penalties. Away from home, they have generated no chances of that quality, and won no penalties.

While their defending style and quality doesn’t have as big of a home-away gap as their attacking, there’s still a very clear drop-off. The biggest area of concern is surprisingly clear shots conceded, despite them not pressing as aggressively while away.

While scanning the Premier League schedule for the weekend, I saw that Brentford was playing Chelsea, and thought “oh that should be a really fun close game.” But we have no evidence that such a thing is going to take place. Brentford badly outplay opponents at home, and get badly outplayed on the road.

Thomas Frank and Bryan Mbeumo were both asked why they think this is the case in interviews last week, and both said they had absolutely no idea. Hopefully that means there’s no difference in their mentality between home and away, and the problem will rectify itself shortly.

Games we’re watching

As always, the best place to find times and listings for your region is LiveSoccerTV.

Manchester City vs. Manchester United — [extremely grandma voice] I remember when this was the biggest match of the year and decided the title favorite.

Villarreal vs. Real Betis — These teams just find a way to get into back-and-forth battles with banger goals.

RB Leipzig vs. Eintracht Frankfurt — Both teams are coming off stinkers in Europe mid-week, and will be looking down the table concerned about Wolfsburg, Dortmund and Stuttgart potentially heating up.

PSG vs. Lyon — Theoretically the team undergoing a massive financial crisis should struggle away to PSG, but Lyon are on great form. They haven’t lost since October and beat the aforementioned Frankfurt in a Europa League thriller on Thursday.

Lazio vs. Inter Milan — This one doesn’t actually happen until Monday. Neither team was at their best in Europe this week, though Lazio pulled off a win at Ajax despite getting out-shot pretty significantly.

Stuff we’re reading

The 2034 World Cup was awarded to Saudi Arabia this week in an uncontested bid. You will be shocked to learn that there are a variety of strong takes going around about this.

Matt Slater at The Athletic is the only unbribed journalist I’ve personally seen make the argument that Saudi Arabia is a good place for a men’s World Cup.

Barney Ronay at The Guardian has an opinion closer to my own, calling FIFA’s decision “an act of violence and disdain.”

Nick Harris at Sporting Intelligence details the extreme greed and corruption surrounding FIFA’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Michael Caley at Expecting Goals digs into Man City’s downturn and how it looks compared to previous dips in form under Pep Guardiola.

Kyle Boas at Tactics Journal noticed Erling Haaland isn’t getting played in behind as much, and isn’t making as many good runs for various reasons.

Josh Williams at Distance Covered breaks down what went wrong with Liverpool’s profiling and decision to sign Darwin Nuñez.

The Boys at Scouted talk about some players who looked good in the UEFA Youth League group stage.

Neel Shelat at Analytics FC looks into how Los Angeles FC has built their team and how well their tactics and recruitment suit MLS.

Chirag Sharatkumar at More Than A Game wrote about David De Gea reviving his career at Fiorentina.

Eliot McKinley at American Soccer Analysis looks at MLS games getting longer, and how that messes with per 90 stats.

—KM

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