Six in-depth stats behind Preston North End’s start to the season as potential concern highlighted

It’s been a start to the season beyond Preston North End’s wildest dreams.

The Lilywhites have won six Championship matches and drawn one - a run of form which sees them sitting top of the table. North End have beaten Sunderland, Stoke City, Sheffield Wednesday, Swansea City, Plymouth Argyle and Birmingham City after sharing the spoils with Bristol City on the opening day of the campaign at Ashton Gate.

Preston’s unexpected strong start has naturally led to plenty of attention. The quality of the Championship in 2023/24 looked stronger than ever, so the questions being asked are how PNE are managing to do so well and whether they can sustain it. With 19 points collected from a possible 21, the excellent Opta Analyst team have looked into North End’s start to the season and crunched some stats. With more than a quarter of last season’s points tally on the board already, we take a look at some of the other fascinating figures to emerge.

How much does a fast start count for?

Opta Analyst: ‘Across the last 30 years of the second tier in England, only eight teams have won as many as 19 points across their first seven games of the season. Of those eight teams, five have won promotion at the end of the season, with four of them finishing as title winners. Cautionary tales that Preston will be hoping to avoid come from Watford, who ended ninth in 2000-01, and Reading, the most recent of these eight teams, who ended just outside the play-offs in seventh place three seasons ago after their strong start.’

Ryan Lowe’s impressive record

Opta Analyst: ‘Only seven clubs won more points (39) than (PNE) following his appointment at the club. Now, 78 league games after he was put in charge, Preston have won more points than any of the other 14 clubs to have been Championship ever-presents since he arrived (121). Since Lowe’s first full season in charge of Bury in 2018-19, he’s won 99 league games as a manager – only Pep Guardiola (147), Jürgen Klopp (133) and Darren Moore (104) have won more across that period, within the top four tiers of English league football. His points-per-game average of 1.57 is a shade higher than managers like Thomas Frank (1.56) and Marco Silva (1.53).’

Summer signings boosting creativity

Opta Analyst: ‘Mads Frøkjær and Duane Holmes have appeared in every single league game so far and added much-needed creativity to their attack – no Preston player has created more chances than both Frøkjær-Jensen (six) and Holmes (eight) from open play across their opening seven games of this season.’

Will Keane a savvy pick up

Opta Analyst: ‘With the only two players to score more than five league goals for PNE last season either out of action (Evans) or departed (Cannon), finding a regular goalscorer was always going to be vital for Lowe. Keane might be just that, having scored 52 league goals since the start of 2020-21, a tally that only seven players have managed more than across the top four tiers in that period.’

Can PNE keep picking up points without top performance?

Opta Analyst: ‘They’ve averaged the fourth-lowest non-penalty shots per game in the Championship at the time of writing (9.0), while their non-penalty expected goals average of 0.92 is higher than only five teams. Their average of 14.1 touches in the opposition box per game is lower than every other Championship side. They’re passive in possession too, with their 40.2% average the fourth lowest in the league, while their field tilt of 37.4% – a measure of territorial dominance between teams looking at the share of possession each team has in their attacking third compared to their opponent – is only higher than Sheffield Wednesday (33.6%) and QPR (29.3%).’

Solid foundation

Opta Analyst: ‘They don’t give opponents many good opportunities, with just 0.99 xG from non-penalty shots per game this season by the opposition – that’s the fifth best average in the division. They have only conceded four goals from these non-penalty chances across their seven games, too.’