Thirty-four Football League games, three divisions, and one scoreline the chance count cannot explain. Stockport County put five past Wycombe Wanderers on an expected-goals reading of 1.5 to 1.4 - a near-even contest on chances, a rout on the scoreboard. Welcome to The xG Review, our Monday look at what the weekend's numbers actually said, division by division.
A housekeeping note first: every one of the weekend's 34 EFL fixtures has full expected-goals data in, including Sunday's two League One games. Nothing here is scoped down - 11 Championship matches, 11 in League One and 12 in League Two, all covered.
Expected goals (xG) measures chance quality. Every shot gets a value between 0 and 1 based on how often shots like it are scored, and a team's xG for a match is those values added up. A side that wins 1-0 from 0.8 xG got the result; a side that loses on 2.5 xG played the better match. Over a season the two tend to converge, which is why the gaps are worth watching now.
Charlton Athletic lead the Championship with nine points from three games, and the model is baffled. Saturday's 1-0 win over Preston North End came from an xG count of 0.9 to 1.1 - outcreated at home, three points anyway. Across the season Charlton have produced 2.8 xG, conceded 5.6, and generated chances worth 2.7 expected points. They have banked nine. That gap of 6.3 points is the largest in the entire Football League, in either direction.
The weekend's most convincing display belonged to Southampton, whose 5-1 defeat of Millwall rested on a 3.3 to 1.7 chance count - the division's biggest single-team xG figure of the round. Wolverhampton Wanderers' 4-1 win over Stoke City (2.4 to 0.7) and Norwich City's 4-1 over Burnley (2.5 to 1.4) were nearly as one-sided on chances as on goals.
The flattered? Bristol City beat Portsmouth 2-1 while creating 0.8 xG to Portsmouth's 1.5. And spare a thought for Bolton Wanderers, who won the chance count 1.9 to 1.3 against Lincoln City and still lost 1-0 at home.
The Stockport County 5-1 Wycombe Wanderers scoreline reads like a rout. The chance count reads like a coin toss: 1.5 xG to 1.4. Five goals from a goal and a half's worth of chances is finishing that will not repeat every week, and Wycombe can feel hard done by in a way the league table will never record.
Sheffield Wednesday's 7-2 win over Bromley was the weekend's most extreme scoreline and, unlike Stockport's, mostly earned - 4.4 xG is a huge single-match figure, even if seven goals still outran it. Wednesday now top our League One xG table on 8.8 created and 2.7 conceded across three games. Blackpool, the actual league leaders, backed their billing too: 4-0 over Peterborough United on 4.1 xG.
Then there is Wigan Athletic. Sunday's 1-0 defeat at AFC Wimbledon came despite a 2.5 to 0.9 xG advantage - the biggest chance-count margin by any losing side all weekend. Wigan are bottom of League One with no points from three games, yet only Sheffield Wednesday have better underlying numbers in the division: 6.4 xG for, 4.1 against, worth 5.6 expected points. Zero from 5.6 is the sort of gap that tends to snap back, hard.
Sunday's other fixture saw Mansfield Town beat Luton Town 5-2 in a game whose chance count - 2.0 to 1.8 - suggested a tight draw, not seven goals.
Bristol Rovers won 2-0 at Crawley Town on a 2.9 to 0.8 chance count and lead our League Two xG table by some distance: 8.2 created, 3.4 conceded, chances worth 6.6 expected points. The real table has them seventh. On these numbers, that gap should not survive long.
Oldham Athletic's 3-0 win over Swindon Town was the division's cleanest: 3.1 to 0.2. Swindon's season numbers deserve a line of their own - 1.2 xG across three games is the lowest attacking output anywhere in the EFL, and their four points have come from chances worth 1.8. Mid-table position, bottom-of-the-pile process.
At the other end of the entertainment scale, Walsall and Accrington Stanley traded five goals on five combined xG (2.6 to 2.4) in a 3-2 that was exactly as chaotic as it sounds, while Gillingham 1-1 Northampton Town produced two goals from a combined 1.1 - the weekend's thinnest contest on chances.
Three games is a tiny sample - a single deflected winner can swing these gaps by two or three points - so treat what follows as early smoke rather than fire. In the Championship, Wrexham sit 20th with two points despite the division's sixth-best expected-points figure (5.5), and Preston North End are still waiting for a first point on numbers worth 3.8. Profiles like those usually correct.
In League One, Bradford City are the biggest overachievers - six points from chances worth 3.0 - while Wigan's shortfall of 5.6 dwarfs everything else in the division. In League Two, Colchester United (seven points, 4.7 expected) and Swindon lead the overachievers, and Accrington Stanley's one point from chances worth 3.9 makes them the model's pick to climb. The full tables, updated after every round: Championship xG table, League One xG table and League Two xG table.
Want the underlying numbers for any club? The live team stats below update after every round.
The xG Review will be back after the next EFL round. For how chance quality feeds our betting angles, see the bet builder tips hub.