Every Premier League club has now played twice, which means the team-level numbers finally have enough in them to be worth reading. Everything below is cumulative - goals, expected goals (xG), shots and clean sheets across gameweeks 1 and 2 combined - pulled from the teams view of the Statz FPL Stats tool, where you can sort and slice all of it yourself.
This is the companion piece to our GW2 player review: that one covers the individuals, this one covers the teams behind them.
Attack first. Manchester United lead the league for expected goals with 6.61 xG from 54 shots - both league highs - yet have only five goals to show for it. Brentford sit second on 5.76 xG, Liverpool third on 5.51, and Chelsea have turned 5.28 xG into seven goals, joint-most in the division alongside Brighton, who have their seven from a more modest 4.45 xG. Manchester City have six from 4.80.
At the other end, Arsenal are running the cleanest defensive numbers in the league: no goals conceded, 0.62 xG against, and one shot on target faced across two matches. They and Hull City are the only clubs with two clean sheets from two. City's 1.16 xG against is next best - though they are yet to keep a clean sheet - and Brentford, with 1.70 xG against and one goal conceded, complete the shortlist of defences whose underlying numbers genuinely hold up.
The stragglers: Ipswich Town have conceded a league-worst 5.33 xG against (and six goals), Newcastle United have shipped 4.92 xG against from 44 shots conceded - joint-most with Ipswich - and Tottenham Hotspur have paired five goals conceded with none scored. Aston Villa's attack is the starkest line in the whole table: two matches, 13 shots, not one on target.
One more column worth knowing about now that defensive contributions score FPL points: Brentford lead the league with 197 defensive contributions across the two games, Leeds United have 190, Everton 185 and Crystal Palace 179 - with Palace's 59 tackles a league high by a wide margin.
The caveat, stated plainly: two games is a tiny sample. Nothing here is a verdict. These are signals - gaps between results and underlying process that usually narrow over time.
Hull City are the league's biggest overperformers, and it is not close. Six points from an expected-points figure of 1.5, three goals from 1.54 xG, and two clean sheets despite facing 3.37 xG and 32 shots. Newcastle are running a similar pattern: four points off 1.5 expected, four goals scored from 2.21 xG, and just two conceded from that 4.92 xG against. Everton have four points while conceding once from 4.37 xG against. All three have banked results their chance data did not earn - which is allowed, but rarely lasts.
Chelsea are the interesting split case: seven goals from 5.28 xG at one end, five conceded from 2.77 xG against at the other. The attack is running slightly hot and the defence slightly unlucky at the same time - six points either way.
The mirror image starts with Manchester United, the only club underperforming at both ends at once: three points against 4.8 expected, five goals from 6.61 xG, and four conceded from just 1.87 xG against. Nottingham Forest have one point from 3.0 expected, Liverpool two from 3.6 despite the league's third-best xG, and Coventry City have no points from 2.1 expected and no goals from 1.37 xG. Tottenham's blank is harder to excuse by luck alone - none scored from 1.87 xG on 26 shots - and Villa's zero points are the one bottom-of-table start the model actually endorses: their 0.8 expected points is the lowest in the league.
Clean sheets: the data trusts Arsenal above everyone. One shot on target faced in two games is as good as defending gets, and their defenders are the premium picks the numbers most support. Brentford's 1.70 xG against makes their budget defenders a quietly strong buy, and City's process (1.16 xG against) says their blank clean-sheet column is sequencing, not a warning. The traps run the other way: Hull's two clean sheets sit on 3.37 xG against and 32 shots conceded, Everton's single goal conceded sits on 4.37 xG against, and Newcastle's defensive numbers are the worst-kept secret in the league - buying any of those defences is paying for results the process did not produce.
Attacks: Manchester United's volume - 54 shots, 16 on target, 6.61 xG - is exactly what you want to buy before the goals catch up, and Liverpool's 5.51 xG with two points tells a similar story. Brentford and City offer volume with results attached. The team-level trap is scoring without creating: Hull have three goals from 14 shots (only Villa, on 13, have taken fewer), and Ipswich have four goals from 2.31 xG while facing more expected goals than anyone at the other end - attackers from either side are riding variance.
For the week-to-week application of all this, the FPL projections convert team strength into player-level expected points, the fixture ticker rates every club's upcoming run, and team news carries the predicted lineups before each deadline.
Arsenal v Chelsea (Sunday): the league's only unbreached defence against its joint-top scorers. The Statz model gives Arsenal a 41.5% clean-sheet probability and Chelsea just 16.4%.
Everton v Manchester United (Sunday): the biggest shot volume in the league meets a defence that has conceded once from 4.37 xG against. The model projects United at 1.74 goals and gives Everton a 17.5% clean-sheet chance - the overperformance gets a proper test.
Manchester City v Coventry City (Saturday): the highest clean-sheet probability of the gameweek, 49.6%, against a side projected at 0.70 goals and yet to score this season. If City's blank clean-sheet column really is sequencing, this is where it ends.
Hull City v Aston Villa (Saturday): the regression watch. Six points from 1.5 expected hosts no points and no shots on target - and the model favours the visitors, giving Villa 1.84 expected points to Hull's 0.92 and projecting them for 1.79 goals.
Full club-by-club numbers, sortable by every column here and plenty more, live in the FPL Stats tool; season-long context sits on the Premier League xG table and the Premier League hub, and the rest of our fantasy coverage is in the FPL section.