u/moabusin

I was going through how much each Premier League club is relying on new signings this season.

48.7% of Spurs' league minutes have gone to players who weren't here last season. Chelsea are next on 33% and the league average is 22.7%.

Van Hecke has played every minute since coming from Brighton and already has a goal. Tonali (429 minutes), Robertson (367, with an assist) and Marmoush (341) are all regulars, and Mateus Fernandes and Savinho are getting games too.

Five games is early, but how long do you all think it is going to take to gel them all together ?

(Built with: The Prism, a football scouting and analytics tool I'm currently building. Looking for testers, so feel free to sign up to the waitlist if you are interested in this type of data!)

I wanted to see how much each of the big football league nations exports its players, so I looked at the data of every English, Spanish, French, German and Italian player in each of the top five leagues this season that has played 90+ minutes this season (for removal of bias)

France exports by far the most: 75 of 193 French players (39%) play outside Ligue 1, spread almost evenly across Serie A (22), the Premier League (20) and the Bundesliga (20).

England is next at 28%: 30 of 109 English players are abroad, and Serie A (12) is now their most common destination, ahead of Ligue 1 (8).

Germany (16%), Spain (14%) and Italy (12%) mostly stay home.

Football fans, thoughts?

Method & Source: every player with 90+ league minutes this season in the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1, grouped by nationality, and charted in Python/matplotlib. (Built with: The Prism, a football scouting and analytics tool I'm currently building. Looking for testers, so feel free to sign up to the waitlist if you are interested in this type of data!)

These are the 12 aged 19 & under players with the biggest share of their club's minutes so far this season

Any of the more 'lowkey' ones you've been keeping an eye on?

(source: The Prism - a football scouting & analytics tool i'm building. Currently looking for testers so feel free to sign up to be one!)

I was going through the Premier League clubs this season with the youngest squads, and Newcastle come out as the youngest side in the league.

Weighted by minutes played, average age is 24.8. That's the lowest of all 20 clubs and the league average is 26.

Hall and Hornicek have played every minute. Miley has played 399 of a possible 450, and Steur has 225 minutes at 18. Newcastle is also second in the league for minutes given to under-21s, behind Brighton!

It's only five games so it could also be injuries and rotation that's affecting these numbers, but I didn't expect Newcastle to be top of this!

Do you guys think January is for 'experience recruitment at the club' or do you think that isn't what is needed atm?

(all data pulled from The Prism, a football analytics & scouting app I'm building and currently looking for early testers!)

I was going through how much each Bundesliga club plays its young players this season, and found Frankfurt top by a distance.

37% of Frankfurt's total league minutes so far this season have gone to players aged 21 or under. Next is Dortmund on 27%, and the league average is 15%. Bayern are on 6%.

Kosugi hasn't missed a minute, and Uzun and Baum have played nearly every game too. Last season we were already fourth for this, with Larsson, Collins and Bahoya getting the minutes, so it's not a one-off.

Only four games in, so still early. But a real pathway or just how the squad has shaken out after the summer?

Was meint ihr?

(all data pulled from The Prism, a football analytics & scouting platform I'm building - currently looking for testers so feel free to sign up to the waitlist if interested!)

A few of you asked for the version with Barcelona and Real Madrid included after my last post, so here it is.

Same method as before, Barcelona get four in: Yamal with 7 goals, Pedri, Cubarsí, and Xavi Espart at 19. Madrid get two, with Bellingham and Huijsen.

Salinas, Zabiri, Román and Moleiro keep their places from the first one, which says a lot about how well they've started!

(all data pulled from The Prism, a football analytics & scouting platform I'm building - currently looking for testers so feel free to sign up if interested!)

This is every club's total distance to its away games this season, across the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1.

It's built from the full 2026/27 fixture list and every club's home ground: straight-line distance from home ground to away ground, added up over the season. Clubs that share a ground (Inter and Milan, Roma and Lazio) count as zero for the derby. Pulled together with The Prism, a football analytics & scouting app I'm building, and charted in Python/matplotlib.

La Liga clubs will travel more than twice as far as Premier League clubs this season: 8,311 km on average, against 3,728.

Lecce, down in the heel of Italy, will cover 14,627 km. Coventry, in the middle of England, will cover 2,914. Deportivo, up in the far corner of Spain, is second at 11,777.

Makes you wonder how much that adds up over a season for the clubs at the edges of the map!

These are straight lines and only one way, so real journeys are longer.

Football fans, thoughts?

Seven games into the season, and I wanted to take a look at Under-23s in La Liga outside of Barcelona & Real Madrid that played at least 45% of their club's league minutes, ranked on output per 90 for their position and weighted by how much they've played.

Racing have two in the XI: Zabiri with 6 goals in 386 minutes, and Salinas, 19, who tops every young defender in the league for tackles and interceptions. Javi Hernández has 4 assists for Espanyol.

P.S. The keeper spot is empty: there hasn't been a under-23 has played a league minute in goal in La Liga this season. The Premier League has four, Ligue 1 four, the Bundesliga and Serie A three each.

Genuinely exciting to see the talent coming out of La Liga's smaller teams. Anyone i've missed/you've been impressed by ?

(data from The Prism, a football scouting & analytics app I'm building - currently letting in tester so sign up if interested!)

I've been crunching the numbers on Newcastle's season so far and put a write up together.

I go through where the shots have gone, why they're 9th despite that, who's carrying the goalscoring, and what I'd expect to happen going forwards.

Full write up here: https://www.theprismai.com/refractions/how-newcastle-are-ninth-whilst-taking-fewer-shots-than-everyone-else

Keen to hear your thoughts if you do give it a read!

Data is every player who played at least 90 league minutes in the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga or Ligue 1 last season.

That's 2,467 players and 3.46 million minutes. Ages are from date of birth, taken on 1 Jan 2026 since that's roughly the middle of the season. Pulled together with The Prism, a football analytics & scouting app I'm building, and charted in Python/matplotlib.

The data shows playing time peaks at 25, and 59% of all minutes are player by players aged 23 to 29.

Goalkeepers were the thing that jumped out. Almost half of the minutes are by keepers over 30, compared with about a fifth for everyone else. Of the 99 keepers who played 1,500+ minutes, 49 were 30 or older.

I didn't expect the leagues to be so different either. Ligue 1 gave 20% of its minutes to players 21 and under, and La Liga gave 7%.

Modrić played 2,816 minutes for Milan at 40, which is very impressive as we know him to be....

Does prove the point of older players who are still around are the ones good enough to stay. P.S. this isnt trying to tell you when players are at their best.

Football fans, thoughts?

Ran some analysis on the data behind every PL club's league minutes this season played by players who joined in the summer window, in table order.

Pretty interesting that the two clubs on 12 points have given less than a fifth of their minutes to new signings, while the two clubs yet to score a league goal are among the four most rebuilt sides in the league.

Across the league as a whole, 22.9% of all minutes have gone to players signed since 1 June. Ipswich are the extreme at 62.3%, which is kind of what comes with promotion...

Numbers pulled from The Prism, a football analytics and scouting app I've been building!

Any surprises?

Mapped the birth nation of every player who played in Europe's top 5 leagues (England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France) last season, sized by real minutes played rather than squad size.

55% of all minutes were from players born outside those 5 countries. Brazil is the single biggest source from outside Europe, 100,646 minutes across 79 players.

France comes out top overall, which surprised me until I checked why: most of it is domestic, 199 of its 309 players are playing in France's own league rather than exported abroad.

Full ranked list of the 14 biggest sources is in the image.

(Source: The Prism, a football scouting & analytics app I've been building. Happy to share more of the underlying numbers if anyone wants a specific country!)

Given the start of the new season is nearly here, I added up how much everyone in the top 5 leagues played in the past year: 2025/26 league minutes plus World Cup minutes.

Kept Goalkeepers in their own box for obvious reasons. Among outfielders it's Elliot Anderson on 3,968, then Guéhi and Enzo Fernández just behind.

The gap is the bit that gets me. The final was 19 July. La Liga starts 15 August, so Cucurella and Cubarsí get 27 days. Cubarsí is 19 and played 3,459 minutes in the last year!

Worth saying these are league minutes only, no cups and no Europe, so every number is a floor rather than a ceiling.

Chart's out of The Prism, a scouting and analytics tool I've been building.

Anyone you'd be worried about? Rice and Xhaka also stand out to me...

Pre-season lull, so thought i'd take a look at which squads are aging... Minutes played rather than squad lists, every club in the top 5 leagues, 2025/26.

The bit that matters more than raw age is the cross: old core and nothing coming through. That's the shaded corner, 14 clubs, with Rayo, Mainz and Lazio the most extreme and Villa and Everton the ones that surprised me.

League-wide, La Liga is much the oldest at 31% median minutes to over-30s. The Premier League is the youngest at 17%.

Old on its own clearly isn't a problem though. Inter won Serie A with 39% of minutes going to over-30s, and Lens finished 2nd in Ligue 1 with a (seemingly) barbell squad, 43% over-30 and 27% under-23 and barely anything in between.

Chart's out of The Prism, a scouting & analytics tool I've been building.

Which of those 14 surprised you? Villa and Everton stand out to me but I don't watch enough Rayo to know whether it's just how they're built.

Been doing some analysis using a scouting tool im building by pulling transfer fees and season stats through the same pipeline, and I checked something quick: does what a club pays track what the player actually did last season?

Below is a chart of every completed permanent transfer of €20m or more between two top-5 league clubs since 1st June. 33 players, €1.68bn. Method and exclusions are in the chart footnote.

Rank correlation between fee and goal contributions per 90: −0.11. Attackers alone: −0.20. Seems like little to no relationship in there.

• Donyell Malen went to Roma for €25m off 18 goals and 3 assists. Anthony Gordon went to Barcelona for €80m off 6 and 2.
• Sandro Tonali is the third-biggest fee of the window at €108m. Last season: 0 goals, 2 assists, 35 appearances.
• Morgan Rogers is the biggest fee at €138m and was also the most productive midfielder in the set. The fee looks to carry no information either way.

The obvious caveat is the interesting part: goals and assists don't measure a holding midfielder or a centre-back properly. But it cuts both ways, because clubs are also paying attacker money for attackers who aren't producing.

Numbers and chart are out of The Prism, the scouting & analytics tool I've been building.

Keen to see people's thoughts on the fee's we've seen during this window, yes it does seem like most are inflated, but what are really the trends (if any)?

In spirit of today's World Cup final, I plotted every team that reached the knockouts on two things: how clinical its attack has been (goals as a share of shots taken) and how resistant its defence has been (shots on target faced that it kept out).

Spain: 10.8% of shots scored, 90% of shots on target faced kept out. Argentina: 17.0% scored, 56% kept out.

Who do you think takes the throne today?

>Source: Built off The Prism, an AI-powered football analytics app i've built. Chart: Python/matplotlib. "Attack" = goals ÷ total shots; "defence" = 1 − (goals conceded ÷ shots on target faced), i.e. the share of on-target shots a team kept out. Population is the 32 teams that reached the Round of 32. No xG in this feed - this is shots and shots-on-target only, so read it as a shot-quantity picture, not a chance-quality one!

Been pulling player-level finishing data across the whole World Cup and one comparison jumped out that a plain Golden Boot table completely hides: shot volume and end product have come apart badly for some of the biggest names.

Took every player with 12+ shots in the tournament (102 matches, through the semis) and plotted shots taken against goals scored.

The cleanest example: Lamine Yamal and Harry Kane have taken the exact same number of shots (23 each) which is the joint-most of anyone outside Messi (34) and Mbappé (33). Kane's scored 6. Yamal's scored 1, with 0 assists across 7 games.

He's not the only one down there. Kevin De Bruyne (20 shots, 1 goal) and Luis Díaz (19 shots, 1 goal) have been just as wasteful, and Michael Olise has taken 17 shots without scoring once (though he's at least got 5 assists to show for it). At the other end, Erling Haaland's been the most clinical high-volume shot-taker with 20 shots, 7 goals, and 65% of them on target.

Built this off match-level shot data I pull automatically in a football data tool I've been putting together (The Prism).

Whats everyone's thoughts on the finishing at this World Cup so far?