How Do Liverpool Compare to Past Premier League Champions?

Liverpool will win the league soon. They've been accused of stumbling over the line though. How have past champions performed at this time of year?

Liverpool’s recent win at Leicester was the clichéd type of victory which we typically see from potential champions. They were not at their best yet with the end of the match in sight they found a way to turn one point into three.

It’s a description that usually gets applied to a match at a crucial point in the campaign when the race is tight. This game was not that, there was no jeopardy at play.

It is only a matter of time before the Reds seal the 2024/25 Premier League title. Had they failed to beat the Foxes, it would’ve made negligible difference to their aim of becoming champions.

Fault must be found regardless. Despite winning six of their previous seven league games, Liverpool are ‘wobbling’, ‘stumbling’ and ‘teetering on the brink of madness, ready to tumble into an abyss of despair’. I made the last one up, but it doesn’t feel that excessive by the standards of football media.

Arne Slot’s side keep getting the job done, nothing more is required (especially when Arsenal have won just six league games since mid-January). This is why the Leicester victory was the true mark of champions; not because the Reds struggled to win, but because of what the score line was.

Compiling the data for the 29 past champion teams in the Premier League’s 20-club era has revealed that the most basic of winning scorelines has been their most common. Liverpool have had three so far this season, they recorded four in 2019/20 and the average has been 4.9 per campaign. Welcome to 1-0, hallmark of title winners.

These findings are to be expected. While the most common single scoreline in the Premier League is 1-1, the most frequent is a 1-0 win for either the home or away side. It’s when victories occur which is more interesting from the perspective of the 2024/25 Liverpool side and the group of champions they will shortly join.

The results split is predictably different across the board than it is for teams that finish top of the pile. The latter enjoys more comfortable wins throughout their triumphant campaigns, fewer nervy, tight victories. As the above chart shows, a champion side is likelier to win 4-0 than record a goalless stalemate.

Slot’s Liverpool have yet to experience either scoreline in the league, though teams ranging in quality from Bayer Leverkusen, through Accrington Stanley and down to Tottenham Hotspur have been crushed four-zip in cup competitions. As for 0-0s, the Reds haven’t endured a bore-draw since concluding their pre-season preparations with one.

While accusations of wobbling are ludicrous, it’s right to note Liverpool have not had many big wins. To date they have accrued five victories by a margin of at least three goals, the fewest by a league winner since Leicester recorded one fewer nine years ago. Even if the Reds add more before the campaign is up, it is unlikely they get close to the average of 8.3 per title season.

Equally, we could flip it slightly to say that with 15 wins by at least two goals, they’re on track to hit the 16.3 average for that level of victory. The present day Liverpool have also suffered fewer defeats than champions might expect, none by a margin of more than one goal.

It is in respect of the bigger wins that they could be said to have fallen short in 2025. Four of the Reds’ five wins by three-or-more goals were in the first half of the season, the last of them occurred in January.

They head into the first of up to five dates with destiny this weekend on a run of four league games without a win by at least two goals, their second longest streak of this type this season. Even then, the most recent such victory needed a pair of penalties against bottom side Southampton. If this isn’t stumbling just a little, what is?

They’re not wildly dissimilar to champions of the past in this respect, however. Different title winners inevitably face different challenges; in terms of the standard of the chasing pack, how close it is point-wise, as well as what extra curricular cup commitments they have to complete. These factors can all influence the value or important of a given league fixture, before you acknowledge the impact of injuries or suspensions.

A graph of the wins by matchweek for the 29 champions to date shows how the second half of the season sees more fluctuation than the first. The victory total from weeks one to 20 is consistently between 18 and 21, then becomes a little more erratic.

The peculiarities of the fixture calendar play a part. Liverpool will become the first champion to play five games within 15 days in a non-pandemic season since 2010, only the seventh in any campaign since 1992.

For the Reds, that fixture flurry ended when they beat Newcastle in game 28, traditionally one of the less successful match weeks at this time of season for champions. This sort of thing will always be a little random.

But Liverpool concluded their 33rd match with six wins from their last seven. Only 10 of the last 29 title winners had at least six victories in the same window; though not without precedent, it only happens around a third of the time.

If the Reds are stumbling in any way - they’re not - it’s only because they are doing what many of their predecessors did before them when the finish line was in sight. Get the job done, move on, uncork the champagne.