Possession Is No Longer Nine Tenths of the Law in the Premier League

Teams with less possession are winning more often than they’re losing in the Premier League. Is this just a quirk or is there something deeper to the numbers?

We all do it, don’t we?

We check the stats after a game, and if one team has had considerably more possession than the other and lost, we raise a quizzical eyebrow wondering how on earth that happened.

The best teams have more of the ball, right? The more possession you have, the more opportunities you have to create chances and score, and for a long time, that was broadly borne out in results in the Premier League.

We have seen the pendulum swing a bit in recent times, though. Having less possession than your opponent might actually now be more conducive to winning in England’s top flight.

Opta has detailed Premier League possession data since the start of the 2005-06 season, and it was a surprise to see what occurred in that first year of recorded numbers. In the 2005-06 campaign, 149 games were won by the team who had more than 50% possession, but 152 were won by the team with less than 50% possession.

Of course, in a match where the split was something like 51-49%, the difference is minimal so you can’t hang your hat on that too much, but looking at games where one team had at least 55% of the ball, it was still 80 wins to 77 in favour of teams who had less than 45%.

However, the next 19 seasons saw teams with more possession win more games than those with less.

You can see from the graph below that it has tended to work in cycles. After every season when the number of wins evened out, it then swung back to favouring those with more of the ball. That was until last season, which followed the 2024-25 campaign in which wins for teams with more/less possession was broadly even. In 2025-26, though, the trend carried on and saw more teams with lower possession win games for the first time since 2005-06.

Across the 2025-26 Premier League campaign, 137 games were won by teams with over 50% of the ball, while 139 were won by teams with less than 50%. Again, though, you could argue those numbers might be skewed by games where there is minimal difference in possession.

However, 83 were won by teams with over 55% possession, and 89 were won by teams with under 45%; also, the first time there were more wins for under 45% possession than over 55% since the 2005-06 season.

This season, there has been an even split between games won by teams with over/under 50% possession (17-17), though 15 of those won by teams with a minority of possession were done with less than 45%. Only 12 of those won by teams with more possession were won with over 55%.

So, are we seeing a change in approach in England’s top flight, or is it just our good friend, variance?

It could be argued some of it is simply due to teams who take the lead then naturally having less of the ball as they try to cling on to victory, but then that would also have been the case in previous seasons when the numbers were vastly different.

You cannot talk about possession trends in the Premier League without mentioning the profound impact of Pep Guardiola. Not that teams didn’t dominate the ball prior to his arrival in England, but the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich boss certainly took it up a notch.

Between 2005-06 and the Spanish coach’s first season in the Premier League with Manchester City in 2016-17, there had only been four instances of a team averaging at least 60% possession across a PL campaign (Chelsea – 60.2% in 2008-09, Arsenal – 60.0% in 2010-11, Arsenal – 60.1% in 2011-12, Manchester United – 61.4% in 2014-15). In each of the first eight seasons after Guardiola joined City, there were at least three teams who did so.

During his 10 seasons at Man City, there were 28 total instances of a team averaging over 60% possession over a full campaign (including all 10 for City). However, only City themselves managed it in 2024-25 and 2025-26, which may have been a factor in Pep deciding to leave at the end of last season, seeing the direction of travel in style of play.

After five matchdays of this season, though, City, Brighton and Tottenham are all averaging over 60% possession. That could of course change with more games, and bottom-place Spurs are certainly proving that having lots of the ball isn’t the be all and end all.

It’s still early in 2026-27, but of the 50 games we’ve had, 22 have had a team record at least 60% possession; on only eight occasions has that side gone on to win. That equates to a win rate of just 36.4%, the third lowest in a Premier League season on record for teams with that much possession, and follows last season’s record-low rate of 34.1%.

Since the start of 2005-06, there have been 1,470 Premier League games won by teams who had at least 60% possession, 263 of which were Manchester City (17.9%).

And that’s something to consider. Some of the numbers around the decade of Guardiola’s dominant City could perhaps skew these stats a bit as they account for a significant number of Premier League matches where a team had over 60% possession in that time. While Guardiola was at City, there were 862 Premier League games won by a team who had over 60% possession, 205 of which were City (23.8%), almost a quarter.

The switch seemed to flip after the 2023-24 season, when there were 202 Premier League games in which one of the competing sides had at least 60% possession. Of those, 108 were won by the team with more possession (53.5%). These were both the second-highest numbers on record for a Premier League season after 2018-19 (206 – 55.8%, and 115 – 54.2%).

Just one season later, those numbers dropped dramatically to just 146 (39.0%) and 57 (38.4%), both the lowest since 2015-16, the season before Guardiola arrived.

That noticeable drop could be down to any number of elements. It could simply be natural evolution we see across periods in football, or perhaps it’s an ‘if you can’t join them, beat them’ approach. After so many years of teams trying to play a similar style to City and falling short, maybe there was a collective belief that going the other way would bear fruit.

The league did still have plenty of managers in the 2024-25 campaign who preferred high-possession football such as Guardiola, Enzo Maresca, Mikel Arteta, Ange Postecoglou, Russell Martin, and even the victorious Arne Slot. But there was also Andoni Iraola, Thomas Frank, Sean Dyche (and latterly David Moyes), Oliver Glasner, Nuno Espírito Santo and Kieran McKenna, whose teams did not seek to dominate the ball.

In January 2025, Guardiola acknowledged a change in direction tactically, saying: “The way that modern football is, is the way that Bournemouth play, the way that Brighton play, that Newcastle play, like we were [playing], that is modern football.”

The Premier League has seen a significant increase in shots and goals from fast breaks. A ‘fast break’ is defined as a quick counter-attack beginning in the defensive half against an opposition defence that is at least partially unsorted.

Prior to the 2024-25 season, there had not been a single Premier League campaign on record (since 2006-07) that averaged more than 1.49 shots from fast breaks per game, or 0.22 goals from fast breaks per game. The last two full seasons have had 1.79 and 1.75 shots from fast breaks per game, and 0.29 and 0.23 goals from fast breaks per game.

After 50 games this season, we have had comfortably the most for both on record (2.08 and 0.34), though that could obviously come down the further we get into the campaign.

There has been a trend of man-to-man marking and high pressing by Premier League teams in recent times, and that has certainly been a factor in this. Not only does playing that way allow teams to win the ball high up and have chances without needing lots of touches of the ball, but it has the counter impact if it doesn’t work: it opens up more spaces for opponents to break away.

That is possibly shown this season in the fact that only seven teams are averaging greater than 50% possession. There is also little indication as to whether it is of benefit or not as four of them are in the top half of the table, and three are in the bottom half.

Take Brighton, for example, who are third having made a strong start to the campaign under Fabian Hürzeler. However, their only defeat in their first five games came at Chelsea, when they had 74.1% possession. By stark contrast, their last outing saw them beat champions Arsenal 3-0 with just 40.1% of the ball.

Xabi Alonso’s Chelsea beat Brighton with a mere 25.9% possession and Fulham with 38.1%, but they also lost to Brentford with 59.8% and drew with Hull despite seeing 68.3% of the ball.

This is not to say there has been a complete departure from possession football. Arsenal won the Premier League last term with an average of 56.3% possession, the fourth highest in the division, and 11 of the 20 competing teams averaged more than 50% across the season.

This season, the two top teams for possession are among the top three in the Premier League table (Man City and Brighton).

There is definitely a trend developing, though, and perhaps it’ll lead all of us to put a little less emphasis on the importance of winning the possession battle.

After all, there is famously only one stat that matters.

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