Premier League Head-to-Head Records

I recently came across an article that explored the idea of the “nemesis” in football, i.e. that team against which a club performs the worst. It’s a concept that crosses the minds of many fans – in the context of existential angst when you lose yet another game to your closest rival; in the context of hubristic triumph, when you consider a game won before it’s played because of past history; and in the context of casual fandom when television producers flash up some obscure statistic of past head-to-head encounters.

At the same time I found that article, I was building a new head-to-head exploration feature for my football site (it’s under the Tables section). The functionality displays a matrix showing head-to-head results using points, goals, and results metrics. I’d already built a rivalries page with historical data on the biggest derbies and the ability to explore past results for any match-up (also under the Tables section). So the idea of head-to-head match-ups was something I’d looked at casually before and the article helped me to think about other angles to explore in the data.

For this article here, I’ll show each Premier League side’s favorite opponent and most truculent adversary using average points per game as it’s what I’ve personally used to think about performance on a per-game basis. I’ve limited the analysis to match-ups where teams have played each other at least ten times, or at least five season of Premier League football together. That’s useful as it removes the perfect records that top teams have against minnows who have barely thrived in the top flight and allows for more interesting results. The tool on my site does not have any such limit so fans of Bournemouth, for example, can mosey on over there for more details.

Team	Opponent	Total Games	Points/Game
Arsenal	Watford	12	2.5
Aston Villa	Derby County	14	2.14
Birmingham City	Bolton Wanderers	14	1.43
Blackburn Rovers	Portsmouth	14	1.86
Bolton Wanderers	West Ham United	20	1.95
Charlton Athletic	West Ham United	12	1.75
Chelsea	Portsmouth	14	2.86
Coventry City	Sheffield Wednesday	16	1.69
Crystal Palace	Leicester City	14	1.86
Derby County	Leicester City	12	2.0
Everton	Portsmouth	14	2.0
Fulham	Bolton Wanderers	22	1.95
Leeds United	West Ham United	20	2.3
Leicester City	Sunderland	14	1.64
Liverpool	Queens Park Rangers	14	2.43
Manchester City	Swansea City	14	2.5
Manchester United	Wigan Athletic	16	2.81
Middlesbrough	Derby County	12	1.92
Newcastle United	Birmingham City	12	2.08
Norwich City	Southampton	14	1.36
Portsmouth	Middlesbrough	12	1.67
Queens Park Rangers	Southampton	12	1.58
Sheffield Wednesday	Everton	16	1.81
Southampton	Crystal Palace	20	2.05
Stoke City	Swansea City	14	1.71
Sunderland	Bolton Wanderers	16	1.75
Swansea City	West Bromwich Albion	14	1.86
Tottenham Hotspur	Swansea City	14	2.57
Watford	West Ham United	12	1.42
West Bromwich Albion	Sunderland	20	1.85
West Ham United	Fulham	22	2.0
Wigan Athletic	Sunderland	14	1.5
Wimbledon	Liverpool	16	1.31

There’s not too much surprising here – most of the sacrificial lambs, so to speak, are historically middling to mediocre sides. The biggest shock, perhaps, is in the last row: Wimbledon, in their eight seasons in the Premier League, had their best results against Liverpool. Of course, the points per game – 1.31 – is a mighty low tally against your favored opponents but it’s still a peculiarity. It’s a peculiarity somewhat explained by my somewhat arbitrary cutoff of five shared seasons but that still allowed for a pool of 16 teams. That pool of teams could have been larger but alas Wimbledon’s path to eventual dissolution after relegation in 2000 is as disconcerting and depressing modern football tale as any.

It’s also interesting to point out that West Ham show up most frequently on this list as four separate teams – Bolton, Charlton, Leeds, and Watford – enjoy playing the Hammers the most. It really must be difficult to be a West Ham fan.

Now, let’s look at the darker side of the coin. Who are the schoolyard bullies, the nemeses, the biggest fish in the pond, the apex predators? Who causes knees to shake, and bowels to empty, and wins games before even kicking the ball?

Team	Opponent	Total Games	Points/Game
Arsenal	Manchester United	54	1.07
Aston Villa	Manchester United	48	0.42
Birmingham City	Manchester United	14	0.29
Blackburn Rovers	Manchester United	36	0.78
Bolton Wanderers	Chelsea	26	0.54
Charlton Athletic	Manchester United	16	0.13
Chelsea	Arsenal	54	1.3
Coventry City	Manchester United	18	0.22
Crystal Palace	Manchester United	20	0.2
Derby County	Arsenal	14	0.43
Everton	Manchester United	54	0.67
Fulham	Chelsea	28	0.46
Leeds United	Manchester United	24	0.79
Leicester City	Manchester United	26	0.5
Liverpool	Manchester United	54	1.0
Manchester City	Middlesbrough	22	0.86
Manchester United	Chelsea	54	1.22
Middlesbrough	Chelsea	30	0.7
Newcastle United	Manchester United	48	0.67
Norwich City	Liverpool	16	0.56
Portsmouth	Chelsea	14	0.07
Queens Park Rangers	Manchester United	14	0.14
Sheffield Wednesday	Newcastle United	14	0.71
Southampton	Manchester United	40	0.7
Stoke City	Chelsea	20	0.45
Sunderland	Manchester United	32	0.47
Swansea City	Tottenham Hotspur	14	0.21
Tottenham Hotspur	Manchester United	54	0.7
Watford	Manchester United	12	0.25
West Bromwich Albion	Chelsea	24	0.5
West Ham United	Leeds United	20	0.5
Wigan Athletic	Manchester United	16	0.19
Wimbledon	Manchester United	16	0.56

Given their level of success it’s no surprise that Manchester United show up the most frequently on this list. Still: 19 times out 33 teams with United as their bogeyman is absolutely incredible, demonstrating just how dominant they have been in the Premier League era. It’s easy to forget this given their (relative) travails of the past few seasons but there was a time, a long time indeed, when seeing the Red Devils line up against you was almost a guarantee you’d be dropping points.

Chelsea also show up on this list several times, seven to be exact. They are the nemesis for Manchester United – though it’s not really a stark difference given Chelsea average only 1.39 points against United versus 1.22 for the Manchester side. It’s really Portsmouth that deserve pity for their performance against Chelsea. A measly 0.07 points/game is their return, which translates into a single, solitary point in 14 matches. Brave was the soul that punted for Pompey in a match against Chelsea.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is seeing Middlesbrough on the list as a nemesis. Across 22 games, they have been Manchester City’s toughest opponents. It just shows how much the Premier League has changed over the years. Middlesbrough were a decent side prior to going down for good in 2009, even reaching a European final in 2006, while City were pretty pants before the Abu Dhabi takeover.

Big Six Head to Head

With due respect to the millions of fans of other clubs, the majority of interest and excitement in the Premier League is generated by the so-called Big Six, in alphabetical order: Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, and Tottenham. So let’s take a look at how they fare against each other – and how they’ve each performed against the rest of the competition. I’ve also included some splits for each club as well to look at performances before and after certain seismic events occurred. Note that the metrics don’t have any limits to numbers of games played as in the previous sections.

Arsenal

Opponent	Full History (1992/93 – 2018/19)	Without Arsene Wenger (1992/93 – 1995/96, 2018/19)	The Arsene Wenger Years (1996/97 – 2017/18)
Chelsea	1.41	1.6	1.36
Liverpool	1.19	0.9	1.25
Manchester City	1.8	2.0	1.74
Manchester United	1.07	1.0	1.09
Tottenham	1.52	1.0	1.64
All Clubs	1.88	1.54	1.97

Arsenal have had pretty decent results against their top rivals though it’s been closer to middling against Liverpool and Manchester United. What’s very interesting is the Arsene Wenger split – Arsenal’s performance against all Premier League clubs is dramatically better during his time helming the club. The performance against Chelsea and Manchester City is lower though much of that would be driven by the lower quality of those clubs in the pre-Wenger years as they had not yet had their paradigm-shifting injections of cash from new owners. The post-Wenger year numbers only look set to get worse once the 2019/20 season is completed.

Chelsea

Opponent	Full History (1992/93 – 2018/19)	Before Roman Abramovich (1992/93 – 2002/03)	Abramovich Ownership (2003/04 – 2018/19)
Arsenal	1.3	0.73	1.69
Liverpool	1.37	1.32	1.41
Manchester City	1.86	2.25	1.72
Manchester United	1.39	1.14	1.56
Tottenham	1.91	2.18	1.72
All Clubs	1.86	1.55	2.08

Chelsea were a pretty serviceable side before Roman Abramovich took over the posh London club but his injection of resources changed the complexion of the Premier League – and arguably European football – forever. Their performances against Arsenal and Manchester United after the takeover show sizeable improvement and emphasize that it was those two clubs’ stranglehold on the Premier League that Chelsea broke. The Abramovich era has also seen about a half-point increase in results in each and every game they have played – that’s 19 additional points a season!

Liverpool

Opponent	Full History (1992/93 – 2018/19)	Before FSG Takeover (1992/93 – 2010/11)	FSG Ownership (2011/12 – 2018/19)
Arsenal	1.46	1.45	1.5
Chelsea	1.37	1.37	1.38
Manchester City	1.66	1.79	1.44
Manchester United	1	1.05	0.88
Tottenham	1.67	1.61	1.81
All Clubs	1.78	1.75	1.87

Liverpool have done fairly well against their rivals – more or less on par with Chelsea – but not nearly as well as Manchester United, both overall and head-to-head. The Fenway Sports Group takeover has yet to pay statistically significant dividends, although to be fair they had a strong baseline before FSG even with so many fruitless years outside of the title hunt. Still, FSG’s appointment of Jurgen Klopp, their imminent 2019/20 title, and what is likely to be a record-breaking points tally are an encouraging, to say the least, signs of a prosperous future. Their head-to-head performance will almost certainly continue to climb as long as Klopp is their manager.

Manchester City

Opponent	Full History (1992/93 – 2018/19)	Before Abu Dhabi Takeover (1992/93 – 2007/08)	Abu Dhabi Ownership (2008/09 – 2018/19)
Arsenal	0.98	0.27	1.68
Chelsea	0.98	0.45	1.5
Liverpool	0.98	0.77	1.18
Manchester United	1.2	0.91	1.5
Tottenham	1.16	0.59	1.73
All Clubs	1.61	1.18	2.06

These were the splits I was most interested in seeing and they don’t disappoint. While the rest of the Big Six have spent all 27 years in the Premier League, Manchester City have experienced five seasons outside of the top flight, including a brief foray to the third tier of English football in 1998/99. What a difference ten years make and what a difference backing by a sovereign nation makes in the fortunes of a club. It’s almost pointless to compare the two different eras but that difference in points per game has translated to over 33 points a season. Their performance against their rivals, exception Liverpool, has been very strong as well.

Manchester United

Opponent	Full History (1992/93 – 2018/19)	Alex Ferguson Years (1992/93 – 2012/2013)	After Alex Ferguson (2013/14 – 2018/19)
Arsenal	1.63	1.64	1.58
Chelsea	1.22	1.29	1.0
Liverpool	1.78	1.83	1.58
Manchester City	1.61	1.88	0.92
Tottenham	2.09	2.29	1.42
All Clubs	2.09	2.16	1.82

It’s not too surprising that Manchester United’s per-game points average is very high against even the best teams in the Premier League – we already saw above how they are the side most club fear to face. It’s not too surprising either that the years after Alex Ferguson retired have seen a drop-off in performance given his status among the best to ever manage a football club. It’s not as dire as one might have thought – they do after all have riches most clubs can only dream of and continue to attract top talent – although it’s enough that contending for the title has been beyond their reach for several season.

Tottenham

Opponent	Full History (1992/93 – 2018/19)	Before Daniel Levy (1992/93 – 2000/01)	Daniel Levy as Chairman (2001/02 – 2018/19)
Arsenal	1.07	1.28	0.97
Chelsea	0.74	0.39	0.92
Liverpool	1.06	1.11	1.03
Manchester City	1.7	2.3	1.53
Manchester United	0.7	0.67	0.72
All Clubs	1.54	1.32	1.65

It’s certainly a reflection of that fact that money is the most important consideration in modern football that Tottenham is included in a Big Six. Their membership is driven by their year-over-year contention for a top four place instead of any legitimate title aspirations. But nevertheless here we are and, as expected, their performance is the poorest of the bunch – both against other Big Six sides and against the league overall – though they are nothing to sneeze at. They are, after all, a good enough club to compete for a Champions League spot in one of the more competitive leagues in Europe.

What’s more interesting is the analysis of the Daniel Levy era. There is no doubt the fortunes of the club have improved under his stewardship, despite his relatively spendthrift approach, but has it improved enough? That’s the question Spurs fans and pundits are always wrestling with: should Tottenham be better than they are under Daniel Levy? It probably doesn’t help that their performance against their bitter North London rivals is substantially worse than prior to his chairmanship but you also can’t deny that there have been some really good teams have recently graced the pitch at White Hart Lane.

A note about the data:

The baseline results data that underpins this analysis is official Premier League data so there is a high degree of confidence in it. Some errors may have been introduced by my coding efforts to transform the data and properly query it. The data covers all Premier League results from the inception of the league in 1992/93 through the 2018/19 season. I’ll do a similar analysis in the future for the German Bundesliga and the Turkish Super Lig.