Burnley make the fewest passes per game of any Premier League side - but make them count!

Issue number 302 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post analyses the InStat data on ball movement in kilometres during possession phases by teams from 35 European competitions for the seasons 2018/19 and 2019/20.

Bayern Munich come out on top, moving the ball 12.7 km per match, ahead of Manchester City (12.5 km) and Liverpool (12.3 km).

In terms of Premier League clubs, Burnley - who sit 11th in the table ahead of tonight's game at Crystal Palace - come in at 8.1km - level with Palace, with Newcastle bottom of the pile with 7.8km.

The Clarets' have the highest average pass length in the top flight with 21.7m, with Newcastle at 20.7m and Palace at 19.2, with Burnley completing 374 passes a game, two fewer than Newcastle, with Palace on 420.

Bayern Munich players achieve on average slightly fewer passes per game than those of Manchester City (705 versus 722), but their distance is longer (18.0 metres versus 17.3).

Liverpool make 654 passes per match (9th in Europe), but their length (18.8m) is much greater than that measured for the vast majority of teams in the top positions of the rankings.

The Greek side Panionios is at the bottom of the table with a ball circulation distance of about 6.8 kilometres per game.

Cardiff City are next, with the lowest number of successful passes overall (326).

The highest average passes lengths were recorded for two Scottish teams: Livingston (23.1m) and Hamilton Academical (22.4m), with Burnley 11th in Europe in that respect.

The full statistics are available at https://football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2019/wp302/en/