There have been only six games in the Premier League this season in which a team has won by at least four goals, and half of those came in the first two weeks of the campaign. So, we’re asking, where have big wins gone?
A ‘thrashing’, a ‘hammering’, a ‘walloping’; those are just some of the colloquial terms in football parlance used to describe a game in which one team has very comfortably beaten another.
Definitions on what constitutes a thrashing (or a hammering, or a walloping, or perhaps even a ‘humbling’) can vary, but those of a certain vintage will probably remember the days when the BBC’s vidiprinter would consider a scoreline so emphatic that it felt the need to spell out the number in case people thought it was wrong.
We think a lot of fans would agree that the leap from three to four goals is about where the line is. Win by three, and it’s a comfortable victory, but win by four, and to many, it’s a ‘thrashing’.
The only other two numbers in which there is probably a leap in significance in the eyes of fans are six and seven (don’t do the thing!).
In recent seasons, we have seen Leicester City AND Manchester United smash Southampton 9-0, Liverpool dismiss Bournemouth by the same record-equalling score, Newcastle United hammer Sheffield United 8-0, and Chelsea, Manchester City, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest win 7-0 against Norwich City, Leeds United, Man Utd and Brighton & Hove Albion respectively.
The Biggest ‘Thrashings’ of all:
Those are extreme examples, though. Such eye-catching results have been absent this season, but there has even been a distinct lack of victories by at least four-goal margins in 2025-26.
So, where have all the thrashings gone?
Rare Four Art Thou?
In the 2023-24 season, which was famously full of goals – the most ever in Premier League history (1,246) – there were 33 games in the English top flight in which the victors won by at least a four-goal margin.
We are 24 matchdays into the 2025-26 campaign, and Arsenal’s 4-0 victory over Leeds United at Elland Road on Saturday was only the sixth time this season that a team has won by at least four clear goals in the Premier League.
We’re sure Leeds fans will disagree, but it was a rare treat for fans of big wins. It was the first time a team had won by at least four goals in the Premier League since Aston Villa did so by the same score against Bournemouth at Villa Park on 9 November.
In fact, of the six instances of a 4+ goal win this season, three of them were in the first two matchdays in August. One more came in September, so those Villa and Arsenal victories are the only ones we’ve seen in the last four and a bit months.
PL Four goal margins 2025-26
With 240 games played, that means only 2.5% of Premier League games this season have been won by at least four goals, the lowest percentage in the competition’s history.
Not only that, but it comes just two seasons after the aforementioned 2023-24 campaign, in which 8.7% of games were won by at least four clear goals, the joint highest for a Premier League season (along with 2009-10).
In fact, 2.5% is less than half the rate we’ve seen in each of the previous 10 seasons.
Premier League four goal victories
Viz by Yash Thakur
If you’re a little stricter in your definition of a thrashing/hammering/walloping, then let’s look at wins by at least five-goal margins.
There were 17 games won by at least five goals in 2023-24 – the most ever in a Premier League campaign – and seven last season.
There has only been one this campaign, and that was all the way back on MD2 when Arsenal thrashed Leeds 5-0 at the Emirates Stadium.
5+ goal wins last 10 Premier League seasons
There have only been four instances of a team scoring five goals at all in a game this season, while no one has yet managed to rack up six yet.
Even scoring six is something that’s happened quite a lot in recent seasons. As recently as the 2022-23 season, there were eight occasions in which a team scored at least six times in a Premier League game. There were a further six instances in 2023-24, and four last season, including Nottingham Forest’s remarkable 7-0 success over Brighton.
This season, though, we are still awaiting our first and we’re almost two-thirds of the way through the campaign.
Why Have We Lost Our Semi-Regular Wallopings?
Now, there are still 140 games remaining in the 2025-26 Premier League season, and so there is plenty of time for these numbers to change. But as shown, thrashings have been relatively scarce to this point.
Tighter Matches?
One clear reason for this is that Premier League games have generally been fairly tight this season. There have been 64 draws in England’s top flight in 2025-26, meaning 26.7% of games have ended all square, the highest percentage we’ve seen since the 2015-16 campaign (28.2%).
We also recently revealed how there have been more goalless draws this season than in recent campaigns, as teams often find themselves proverbially cancelling each other out.
There has also been a reduction in ball-in-play time this season, currently averaging 55 mins 35 secs. That is down from 58:11 in 2023-24 and 56:59 last season, but is still more than 2021-22 (54:45) and 2022-23 (54:49), when there were 32 and 25 four-plus margin victories respectively.
With set-pieces such a focus in the Premier League this season, as well as a seemingly greater focus on defending, perhaps the evolution in style of play and tactics is responsible.
There have indeed been slightly fewer goals this season than in the last few campaigns, but again, while 2023-24 stood out (an average of 3.28 goals per game), the difference is minimal.
Last season, there were 2.93 goals per game, and after MD24 this season, there has been an average of 2.79. There were fewer goals per game in 2017-18 (2.68), and yet there were still 31 games in which a side won by at least four goals.
Goals per game last 10 seasons Premier League
Teams are still scoring goals, then, but this term, both teams are scoring and nobody can pull away. For example, there have been 22 occasions in which a team has scored at least four goals in a Premier League game this season, but only four times did that side also keep a clean sheet.
More Clean Sheets?
Could it therefore be down to a lack of clean sheets? Are teams capable of scoring enough to win by big margins, but often not able to keep things tight at the other end at the same time?
In short, no. In fact, it doesn’t seem to make any difference whatsoever.
For example, the 2023-24 season had the most 5+ goal margin victories of any other Premier League campaign (17), but it also had the fewest clean sheets in the competition’s history (157).
Last season had the second fewest clean sheets (178) in history, and this season is on course to hit 196. They don’t seem to be the issue.
Conserving Energy?
Perhaps the greater focus on player fitness given the increasing number of games being played is leading to managers being more mindful of conserving energy where possible.
In the past, when their team had a three-goal lead, maybe they would have been more likely to go for it to improve goal difference and/or confidence levels, or simply to entertain their fans.
There’s a chance managers are now more likely to ask their team to ease back down the gears in such circumstances. You will often see key attacking players in particular subbed off in games where their team has what their boss considers to be a comfortable advantage to save legs, rather than be left on to try and add to their goal involvement numbers.
A More Competitive League?
All this could simply point to a wider trend that the strength of the Premier League has simply become more balanced and competitive. Barring a few exceptions, there are few fixtures in the competition that you would confidently say now would go one way or the other.
The collective quality of the ‘poorest’ teams in the division is also the best it’s been in the last three seasons. Just one of the promoted sides, Burnley, currently find themselves in the relegation zone after MD24. That’s after all three promoted sides have been relegated in both the last two campaigns. The three sides in the relegation zone at present have a combined goal difference of -71. That’s an improvement on the -91 after 24 games last season, and the -75 at the same point in 2023-24.
Then you also have Wolves, who at times this season have looked like they might become statistically the worst team in Premier League history, but even they have turned things around in recent weeks, picking up some points, and at the very least giving teams a game.
A thrashing suggests a lop-sided contest, and you just don’t see those as often these days. Indeed, the four teams to have won a Premier League game by at least four goals this season are all sat in the top five in the table. No team outside the current top five has done so after 24 games. If the table doesn’t lie, then it suggests having the strongest squad is a big factor in being able to run riot against a fellow Premier League opponent. It’s therefore little surprise that Arsenal and Man City account for two-thirds of such victories.
While fans obviously like to see their teams win by the largest margin possible, it is undeniably a positive for neutrals that games are generally more competitive, keeping things suitably unpredictable.
Of course, as we often caveat in this sort of analysis, there’s a chance this is partially down to our old friend: variance. Who’s to say that Matchday 25 won’t grace us with a series of thrashings, skewing these numbers entirely?
However, the trend seems to suggest that is rather unlikely, and with Arsenal not playing Leeds again this season, presumably much to the relief of Daniel Farke and his team, this could end up being the Premier League campaign with the fewest ‘wallopings’ on record.
Premier League Stats Opta
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