Remember when the Premier League was all about pressing, recycling and Pep Guardiola’s bloodless positional play dominating every tactical conversation? That era isn’t dead, but the data from 2025/26 is telling a very different story, and if you haven’t adjusted your fantasy thinking to match it, you’re leaving points on the table.
We’ve been tracking the numbers all season at Stardraft and the trends have only sharpened as we approach the final six games. Long balls are up. Set piece goals are surging. And the Stardraft scoring system built to reward the full picture of a player’s performance is surfacing a completely different set of winners to FPL. Here’s what the data says.
The Direct Play Surge: It’s Real and It’s Not Going Away
Average passes per game this season sit at 873.3 — down from 893.4 last season and well below the recent peak of around 941. Long balls of 32 metres or more are running at 99.6 per game, up from 93.4 last season. That’s a structural shift in how the league is being played, sure we can all see it, but the data backs it.
The teams leading the charge: Brentford (59.1 long balls per match), Burnley (58.8), Wolves (56.6), Bournemouth (54.0). Even Arsenal — who supposedly represent the pinnacle of possession-based football — are averaging 45.8 long balls per match. Pep’s City are lower almost the outlier, but the league-wide direction of travel is clear. Pressing-heavy teams are getting bypassed. Compact mid-blocks are forcing direct play. And the Premier League is looking a lot more like something in years gone by.
What’s driving it? Two things. First, the pressing intensity of the top teams has forced opponents to go longer from goal kicks rather than build through a press that will cost them, if you can’t go through them, go over them. Very Sam Allardyce. Over 51% of goal kicks this season have been long. Second, the rise of long throws as a deliberate tactical weapon. They’re running at 3.44 per game — up from 1.52 last season — more than double any prior decade-high. The Delap effect has spread. Everyone has a launcher now. Keith Andrews, we are looking directly at you here.
Set Pieces Are Deciding the Premier League. The Numbers Don’t Lie.
Last season, non-penalty set piece goals made up 20.6% of all Premier League goals — around 225 from 1,091 total. This season? We’re tracking 25.4% and climbing, projecting to around 257 by the end of the campaign. Including penalties the figure jumps to 33.3%. One in three Premier League goals is now coming from a dead ball situation.
The team-by-team breakdown is where it gets really interesting for fantasy purposes. Newcastle lead the division with 14 non-penalty set piece goals — and when you include penalties, 50% of their total goals come from dead balls. They’re not outliers chasing luck they’re engineering set piece situations and executing them, sounds simple enough really. Crystal Palace hit 48.3% including penalties. At the other end, Man City sit at 10.7% excluding penalties, still Guardiola’s open-play wizardry, but even City aren’t immune to the trend.
The Stardraft implication is enormous. Our scoring system rewards every link in the set piece chain. The delivery earns crossing points. The header earns aerial duel points. The goal earns 10pts for a defender or 9pts for a forward. A team like Newcastle, running 50% of their goals through set pieces, is producing Stardraft points across multiple scoring categories on dead ball situations that FPL only rewards with a single goal or assist. This is the gap. This is where Stardraft managers get their edge. Look the data still stands if you are playing on FPL, if you have a decision between 2 players, pick the one either taking the set piece or their target.
The Fantasy Run-In: Who the Data Is Pointing At
With six games left and the direct play surge showing no sign of slowing, here’s what the stats say about where the value is hiding in the run-in.
Newcastle’s set piece kings. Whoever is delivering and attacking corners and free kicks for Newcastle is printing points. Their 14 non-penalty set piece goals are the highest in the division. The aerial winners aren’t just scoring they’re winning duels, earning clearance points when defending and generating a consistent point-scoring profile that FPL doesn’t fully reflect. With six games remaining and a fight for European qualification, Newcastle’s intensity won’t drop. Back the aerial threats. Thiaw, Burn are 100% the ones to watch.
Arsenal’s defensive line as a stats engine. We’ve covered Saliba and Gabriel in depth this season, but in the context of the direct play surge it’s worth repeating. Arsenal face long balls, aerial duels and defensive set pieces on the higher end of the league because opponents have to go over the press and try to get behind them. That means clearances (0.25pts each), aerial wins (1.5pts each) and interceptions (1.5pts for defenders) are all inflating. Their clean sheet record does the rest. They’re not just defensive assets they’re stats machines in the current meta.
Brentford’s Thiago as the direct play beneficiary. Premier League goals. The most direct team in the division in terms of long ball frequency. A striker built for exactly this kind of football — physical, powerful, comfortable receiving long balls and winning aerial duels before turning and finishing. On Stardraft, his shots on target volume (2pts each) and goal tally (9pts per goal) make him one of the best value forwards in the game. He has six games left and a run-in that doesn’t scare him.
Ball-winning midfielders everywhere. The direct, transitional nature of the current Premier League meta means more loose balls, more duels in the middle third, and more opportunities for athletic midfielders to rack up interceptions and tackles. On Stardraft — 2pts per interception for midfielders, 1pt per tackle won — this is the sleeper category of the run-in. The midfielder who presses hard, wins the ball and then recycles simply doesn’t show up in FPL scoring. On Stardraft, they can outscore the glamour names in a poor week.
The One Stat That Defines the 2025/26 Season
If we had to pick one number that sums up what’s changed in the Premier League this season, it’s this: long throws have gone from 1.52 per game to 3.44 per game. More than double. In the space of a single season. The Delap long throw was supposed to be a novelty a quirky weapon for one mid-table team to exploit before the rest of the league adapted. Instead, it spread. Now every club has someone launching it in from the touchline, and the conversion rate of long throws into shots (24%) and goals (2.4%) is too good for managers to ignore.
It’s not anti-football. It’s evolution, exactly the kind of tactical shift that separates the managers paying attention to the data from the ones still picking teams based on last season’s meta. At Stardraft, the scoring system was built to reward exactly this kind of football. The grafters, the launchers, the aerial winners. FPL hasn’t caught up. That’s your edge.
Six games left. The data is telling you where the points are. Now go and get them.
Comments are closed