The underlying data behind Burnley’s worrying start to the season

The Championship table makes for pretty disastrous reading for Burnley fans at this moment in time.

Seven games in, the Clarets - one of the favourites for promotion before a ball was kicked - find themselves bottom of the pile and without a win to their name.

Nicky Hayen is already coming under increasing pressure, with the Clarets boss describing Saturday’s game against fellow early strugglers Derby County as “must-win”.

Clearly, all is not well at Turf Moor.

But seven games is a relatively small sample size, so we’ve decided to dig deeper into the early season statistics to get a clearer picture of where Burnley are going wrong.

While the only facts and figures that truly matter are wins, draws, losses and points, sometimes it can be important to look beyond the early results and check the underlying data.

Are Burnley really performing as badly as the scorelines suggest? Or is there more nuance and context? Perhaps there could even be some hope on the horizon?

Perhaps the most damning stat is that Burnley have already conceded 16 goals so far this season. Yes, that’s the exact same amount as the Clarets conceded in the entirety of Scott Parker’s 2024/25 promotion campaign.

Even more worrying is that those 16 goals have come from just 32 shots on target. Literally every other attempt on goal is going in.

Surely that’s not sustainable? But at the same time, it leads to obvious question marks over inexperienced goalkeeper Max Weiss, who has endured an unconvincing start to the season.

While Swansea City’s first goal on Saturday was obviously a major error, too often this season we’ve been left thinking: ‘well that goal wasn’t his fault, but he still could have done better’.

For whatever reason, opposition sides aren’t having to work particularly hard to score past Burnley at this moment in time.

At the other end, while Burnley have been far from prolific - scoring eight times in seven games - that’s still more than every side in the bottom nine. QPR, in fifth, have also scored the same amount.

Burnley are averaging 14.3 shots per game, the 10th highest of any side in the Championship. They had 18 shots on goal against Swansea, compared to the home side’s 13.

But what about the quality of Burnley’s chances? While stats can vary from site to site, one source has Burnley’s Expected Goals (xG) at 1.47 per game, the 11th highest of any side in the division. Another suggests Burnley’s overall xG this season is 10.15, the 12th highest.

Still nothing to write home about compared to their lofty pre-season ambitions, but far better than a side that is currently rooted to the bottom of the table.

Away from home, only three sides - Cardiff City, Middlesbrough and Bristol City - are averaging a better xG than Hayen’s troops.

Before the season got underway, we were expecting to see a high pressing Burnley side under their new boss, but it’s yet to really materialise.

Burnley have overseen just 67 pressing sequences so far this season, the third lowest of any side in the second tier. Norwich, who top the list, have had 103.

Just 12 per cent of Burnley’s presses end in a shot, the fifth lowest in the division. Bristol City, Southampton and Stoke City are all at 30 per cent.

Despite Hayen questioning Burnley’s passing accuracy at Swansea at the weekend, only six sides have successfully completed as many passes as them so far this season. The problem is, and this won’t come as a surprise to Burnley fans, only 31.8 per cent of their passes are played forwards, which ranks them among the bottom seven in the Championship.

Another stat that won’t surprise supporters is that no other side has produced as many errors that have led to shots against them as Burnley - with 10. Four of those have ended in goals, which again, is a divisional low.

Almost 17 per cent of the total shots (not just on target) Burnley have faced have gone in, which puts the Clarets at the foot of the table yet again. By comparison, just six per cent of the shots Charlton have faced have ended in goals.

According to xG, Burnley ought to have conceded 11 times so far this season, not 16. No other side has such a disparity between the expected number of goals conceded and the actual number.

Weiss also comes out joint-bottom in the list of Championship goalkeepers who have prevented the most goals, alongside Max Crocombe, of Millwall, and Norwich’s Vladan Kovacevic.

So all in all, a mixed picture. But one thing is clear, Burnley are conceding goals far too easily and that needs to be addressed ASAP.