Bayer Leverkusen: down 8 points (from 56 projected points to 48)It’s pretty well-established at this point that part of the reason for Bayern Munich’s 10-year Bundesliga title streak is that some of the clubs that could most reliably become challengers end up selling the rights to their best players and always falling into at least a partial rebuild mode. It’s also been a problem, of late, that German clubs recycle managers to and from each other; they seem to have fallen behind a bit when it comes to original ideas.
Bayer Leverkusen has neither problem at the moment. It kept its trio of star scorers — Patrik Schick , Moussa Diaby and the currently injured Florian Wirtz — this past offseason and added another exciting attacker in Czech winger Adam Hlozek . Better yet, they are led by manager Gerardo Seoane, whose ideas for a combination of possession play and counter-attacking opportunities made the club one of the most interesting and exciting in the league last season.
Wirtz is still out, but the team looked good enough down the stretch without him last season that it was easy to see Leverkusen at least laying a good challenge into Bayern for a while and putting together an even more successful run than last year’s third-place finish.
Instead, three matches into the Bundesliga season, they are already nine points behind Bayern. Throw in a shocking 4-3 loss to third-division SC Elversberg in the first round of the DFB Pokal, and the club has begun the season with four straight losses. Augsburg and TSG 1899 Hoffenheim finished 14th and ninth, respectively, in the Bundesliga last season; they’ve both already won in the BayArena this season.
What the hell is going on in Leverkusen? Two things, mainly: They’ve been dreadfully unlucky, and their transition game has collapsed.
First, the luck: They’ve attempted 46 shots worth 5.1 xG, fourth-most in the league, but they’ve scored just once in three matches. They’re allowing shots worth 1.2 xG per 90, but they’re allowing two goals per match. Their xG differential is +0.5 per match (fifth in the league), and their goal differential is minus-5 (16th). They are tilting the field dramatically and have nothing to show for it.
Meanwhile, their opponents are scoring goals like this.
This obviously isn’t going to last. Schick (1.8 xG, zero goals) and Diaby (2.5 combined xG and xA, zero actual goals and assists) are going to progress to the mean, and that alone will cure a lot of what is currently ailing Die Werkself . (The rumored loan addition of Callum Hudson-Odoi certainly wouldn’t hurt.) But their jobs are also made a lot more difficult at the moment by the complete lack of transition opportunities.
In what I call transition possessions — possessions that start outside of the attacking third and last 20 or fewer seconds — Leverkusen dominated the Bundesliga last season. They averaged 0.9 goals per match from these possessions (first) and allowed just 0.3 (also first). The shots they generated from these possessions were of particularly high quality (0.19 xG per shot).
This season, they have yet to score from a transition possession, and opponents have already scored four times. They are averaging just 0.13 xG per shot in these possessions and allowing 0.17. The most interesting thing about Leverkusen’s approach last season was that they would lure opponents into their half of the field, foregoing a lot of initial pressing but opening up potential counterattacking lanes.
This season, they’re trying much harder on defense (they’re allowing 8.3 passes per defensive action, the lowest in the league), in part because of how frequently they’ve been behind on the scoreboard, but they are creating very little from it.
The balance is all off. It probably won’t remain that way, but the damage from this awful early run could last all season. FiveThirtyEight projected them fourth in the league at the start and gave them a 44% chance of qualifying for the Champions League; just three matches in, they’re now projected to finish eighth and have just a 22% chance. Everything is still up for grabs (aside from any darkhorse title shot they hoped to have), but they now have a lot of work to do.
Troyes : down 7 points (from 44 to 37)One of the more recent additions to the City Football Group family is still looking for traction in France ‘s top division. Troyes earned promotion in 2020-21 but played mostly unwatchable ball in finishing 15th last season; they were given a 31% chance of relegation to start the year, but they followed up a 3-2 loss to Montpellier with losses by a combined 7-1 to Lyon (semi-forgivable) and Toulouse (not so much). Now their relegation odds are at 51%, a scary projection this early in the season.
The attack has shown slight promise — Troyes are averaging a solid 0.13 xG per shot, and midfielder Florian Tardieu has combined two goals with five chances created — but opponents are averaging even higher per-shot quality while taking a higher quantity of shots. Despite the City affiliation, Troyes generate no pressure in defense, and they average just 4.0 passes per possession (17th in Ligue 1) with a 37% possession rate (20th). And they’ve only played one reasonably top-tier team thus far.
Troyes spent its money this offseason like a team unafraid of going down. Their five primary acquisitions average an age of 20.4, and half of the transfer budget went to acquiring Brazilian teenager Savio , whom they loaned out to PSV Eindhoven . American defender Erik Palmer-Brown is finding plenty of playing time here, but he’s part of an absolutely overwhelmed defense. This team doesn’t have the raw talent to dig its way out of a huge hole, so the rally needs to begin quickly.
Leicester City: down 7 points (from 51 to 44) Things have grown stale at the King Power Stadium. After back-to-back fifth-place finishes in 2019-20 and 2020-21, Leicester had to rally to finish eighth in the Premier League during an injury-plagued 2021-22 campaign, one in which they produced just the 14th-best xG differential.
Manager Brendan Rodgers returned for a fourth full season in charge, but the roster remains in flux. Longtime goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel is gone. Defender Wesley Fofana , whose importance was proven when he missed months of last season with a broken leg, wants to go to Chelsea. Midfielder Youri Tielemans is almost unexpectedly still in town, though Tielemans-related transfer rumors never stop.
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Meanwhile, though Premier League rivals — not just the league’s Big Six, but the Wolves- and Nottingham Forest-level teams as well — have whipped out the checkbook to an unprecedented degree … Leicester hasn’t signed anyone besides a backup goalkeeper?
Thus far, standing pat has not paid off. Forward James Maddison has started the season beautifully (two goals and one assist from seven chances created), and Leicester has scored five goals despite getting nothing yet from Jamie Vardy .
But new starting keeper Danny Ward has been utterly dreadful, saving just 47% of shots on target, and last year’s woes in both set-piece defense and preserving leads have continued. The Foxes have already allowed a pair of set-piece goals, and they’ve blown leads of 2-0 (in a 2-2 draw with Brentford) and 1-0 (2-1 loss to Southampton).
The woeful defensive stats will likely stabilize a bit, but Leicester has been overachieving on offense, too — that also might regress to the mean. They began the season with a 10% chance at a Champions League bid and an 8% threat of relegation; after snaring one point in three matches, those numbers have flipped to 3% and 20%, respectively. They have played like a relegation-level team thus far, and now they’ve got three road trips (including trips to Chelsea and Tottenham) in their next four league matches. Steering out of this skid might be difficult.
West Ham United : down 6 points (from 50 to 44)New upstarts are treating old upstarts rather unsentimentally early this season. The Hammers have finished sixth and seventh over the last two seasons under David Moyes, but they have yet to score in three league matches. After an understandable 2-0 loss to Manchester City in the opener, they were beaten by a combined 3-0 by Nottingham Forest and Brighton. Whenever they secure their first point or score their first goal of the season, they will be the last team in the league to do so.
As strange as it sounds, the defense might be more problematic than the attack early on. West Ham’s 3-1 win over Viborg in the opening leg of Conference League qualification was a reminder of the upside of players like Michail Antonio and new acquisition Gianluca Scamacca , and the Hammers are generating 1.2 xG per 90 and attempting 0.15 shots per possession (ninth in the league). But they’re allowing 1.8 xG per 90 (19th) and 0.14 xG per shot (19th).
Liverpool: down 6 points (from 80 to 74)If you had asked a Liverpool fan what a worst-case scenario start would be for their team this year (barring something extreme like “every center back on the roster suffers a long-term injury,” as what happened in 2020-21), they would have probably given an answer like “The midfield suffers a couple of early injuries, the attack stutters in trading Sadio Mane for Darwin Nunez , and we drop some early points that we shouldn’t.” As far as worst-case scenarios go, it’s not awful, but still … check, check and check.
Thiago Alcantara has already suffered his annual early-season injury (a hamstring issue this time), Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has been out for weeks, Naby Keita could be out a while, and Curtis Jones is nursing a calf injury. Harvey Elliott and 36-year-old James Milner have already combined for 375 minutes in three matches, which certainly wasn’t the plan before the season. Meanwhile, the attack is indeed a bit scattershot — Liverpool is 10th in goals scored, seventh in xG created and 15th in xG per shot — and Nunez, the newly-acquired golden-boy forward, missed the first match of the season against a fellow Big Six opponent (Manchester United) when he got baited into a red card against Crystal Palace.
The Reds fell behind in each of their first three matches and managed to rally only for draws against Fulham and Palace and a 2-1 loss to United. They’re currently in 16th place, and while they’re still the most likely team to finish second in the Premier League, per both FiveThirtyEight’s projections and obvious logic, they’ve already handed City a five-point advantage. The eventual Premier League champion has dropped an average of 19.2 points over the last six seasons; Liverpool has already dropped seven.
We know they can rally because they did it just last season — they were 14 points behind City and charged back to within one (while winning two domestic cups and reaching the Champions League final). But their title odds, per FiveThirtyEight, have already been cut in half (from 30% to 16%), and their odds of finishing in the top four have fallen from 83% to 71%.
They are still among the Champions League favorites, and this is still likely to be a very successful season overall. But the midfield is indeed an aging mess, and their +0.2 xG differential per match ranks eighth in the league; they haven’t simply been victimized by poor bounces. How much more ground will they give up before they find their groove?
