Leicester City: The most-average club in the Premier League

Watching this team play every week, you get the sense that we are either hopelessly dire (Huddersfield) or world-beating champions (Tottenham), but you seldom get the feeling that Leicester City are average. “Average” implies ordinary, pedestrian, and, worst of all dull. Nonetheless, if you’re looking for the team that is, statistically, the single most average club in England’s top flight, look no further than the King Power.

Following Saturday’s victory over Burnley at the King Power, Leicester City sit 9th in the Premier League. We are comfortably mid-table, but you might wonder just how mid-table we are. Or you might, if you’re like me and have a thing for football and spreadsheets and avoiding productive work.

We now have 5 wins, 5 draws, and 5 defeats, which aside from being nicely symmetrical, puts us on 20 points. The league as a whole has a total of 414 points for an average of 20.7 points. The Foxes are, as you’ve probably guessed, closer to that average than any other club.

The Foxes goal differential is now exactly zero, which is obviously the exact average goal differential for the league. In addition, we have scored 20 goals and allowed 20. The league as a whole has scored and allowed 396 goals, or 19.8 goals scored and allowed.

Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images

At the King Power, Leicester have scored 11 goals and allowed 9. The league average? 11.1 goals for, 8.7 goals against. Away from home, we’ve scored 9 and allowed 11 and, of course, the league scores 8.7 and allows 11.1 in away matches. We are the “most-average” club in each of these categories.

The last four seasons have been nothing if not dramatic for the Foxes. We’ve won promotion, narrowly avoided relegation, won the league, and found ourselves in another relegation scrap. I can’t remember the last time City have had a comfortable mid-table season.* Of course, we’ll probably either win or lose a few matches on the trot, putting us in contention for Europe or relegation. For now, though, we’re not just “mid-table,” we’re the extremely average side in the league.

* Of course I do. It was 2011-12, when we finished 9th in the League Championship. We don’t talk about the end of 2012-13.