Premier League xG/xGA: Finding Value in Your Bets

After the final International Break of 2025, the Premier League is about to embark on its traditional intense period across December and January that really serves as the meat and gravy of the season.

Champions aren’t always decided in this period, but it can really act as the make-or-break period, showing who is going to be in contention and who might be staring down the barrel of relegation later next year.

For sports betting, the middle of the season should be considered a little more predictable than the early period. For the latter, there are often strange results, with teams struggling to bed in new players or to shake off early-season rust. After ten to a dozen games, there shouldn’t really be any excuses.

xG can be a useful indicator for sports betting

Of course, when we are talking about football betting, we should also be talking about finding value for your wager, and the best place to look in the Premier League is arguably the xG table.

xG (expected goals), as well as xGA (expected goals against) and xPTs (expected points), are not universally adored as metrics, and they should only be one part of your betting strategy, but they can give you insight into teams that are performing well but not getting the results. The reverse is also true: it can tell you about teams getting better results than their performance merits.

Current xG table tells a story

Looking at the current xG table in mid-November, there is one team really standing out as an anomaly – Newcastle United. The Magpies are currently 14th in the Premier League table, way below expectations, yet there is an argument that their performances should have seen them higher up the table.

They have underperformed their xPTs by more than any other team in the Premier League. In the simplest terms, they should have scored more goals and conceded fewer.

Now, here’s the rub: It looks like things aren’t going to get much easier for Newcastle. Their next game is against Manchester City (away), and they have to balance their Champions League campaign with tricky fixtures against teams like Everton and Tottenham in late November and early December.

However, there are plenty of winnable fixtures across late December and January, including games against Burnley (twice), Wolves, and Leeds.

Take other considerations into your betting strategy

Those games are the types that you should be looking at to see if you can get value in your bet for a team like Newcastle. Sports betting sites do take xG and other metrics into consideration when compiling odds, but not getting the results in the ‘real world’ will play into the calculation, so you might be able to snap up some value for Newcastle in the coming months.

Of course, there are other things to bear in mind, including the fact that a string of bad results can put pressure on the manager and players. Eddie Howe is starting to feel that pressure now.

xG should be just one part of your betting strategy

As we mentioned earlier, xG is not beloved by everyone. Some believe the statistics can be misleading. To give you an example from this season, Manchester United are also underperforming their xPTs, albeit not by as much as Newcastle.

Nonetheless, some believe that Manchester United’s high xG comes from players taking a lot of shots outside the box, which can almost be considered as gaming the metric. If you’ve watched United play this season, you’d be forced to agree that the likes of Bruno Fernandes do shoot from long range a lot.

In the end, xG should be applied alongside your own study and strategy. We would argue that Newcastle have indeed underperformed in results compared to performances, but we would only come to that conclusion after seeing them play a lot, as well as what the xG says on paper. Do your research, watch the action so you can make up your own mind, and incorporate statistical measures like xG as one part of your overall football betting strategy.