What's the Average Goals Per Game in the Premier League?

TL;DR: The long-run average is around 2.7-2.8 goals per Premier League match, with recent seasons trending slightly higher. That puts the Premier League roughly in the middle of Europe's big leagues for goals, and it shapes which scorelines come up most often when you are predicting matches.

Average goals per game is one of those numbers that sounds simple but ends up affecting almost every prediction you make. If you know the typical match produces about 2.7 goals, you start to understand why 1-1, 2-1, and 1-0 are so common, why 5-3 is genuinely rare, and how to weight your predictions across a full season.

The Premier League Numbers

Across modern Premier League seasons, the goals-per-game average has been remarkably consistent:

• Long-run average: around 2.7-2.8 goals per match
• Recent seasons: trending slightly higher, occasionally past 3.0
• Lowest modern seasons: typically around 2.45-2.55 goals per match
• Highest modern seasons: typically around 2.85-3.05 goals per match
• Total goals per season (380 matches): typically around 1,000-1,150

These numbers are not arbitrary. They emerge from the underlying tactical balance of the league - how aggressively top teams attack, how stretched defences become against high-pressing systems, and how the gap between top and bottom sides has evolved. We covered which scorelines come from these averages in the most common Premier League scores.

How That Compares to Other Leagues

The Premier League sits roughly in the middle of Europe's top divisions for goals per match:

• Bundesliga: typically the highest scoring of the big five (around 3.0+ in recent seasons)
• Premier League: around 2.7-2.8, slightly trending up
• La Liga: typically slightly lower, around 2.5-2.7
• Serie A: traditionally lower scoring, around 2.5-2.7 in recent seasons
• Ligue 1: variable, often clustered around 2.6-2.8

Different leagues have different scoring cultures, and that affects how predictions translate across competitions. A 1-0 prediction is much more 'safe' in Italy than in Germany. The Premier League's middle-of-the-pack scoring rate is part of why it produces such tactically varied matches.