Is goal difference important?

Should Spurs have hurt Liverpool's goal difference even more on Sunday?

It was suggested in some corners that Tottenham might live to regret not embarrassing Liverpool even further on the weekend; with both sides likely to be competing for the final Champions League spot in May, Spurs could have dealt Liverpool’s goal difference an early blow.

“It might come down to goal difference” is straight out of the Premier League phrasebook, suggesting title candidates, European hopefuls and relegation scrappers would do well to keep an eye on the next-to-last column on the league table.

Mathematically speaking, however, goal difference at the top end of the table has proved to be almost entirely irrelevant over the history of the Premier League.

Neither the title nor final automatic Champions League place* has ever been decided by goal difference. Meanwhile, only twice has the final Champions League place through qualifying or the final UEFA Cup / Europa League place gone to teams on merit of having a better goal difference, in 1997 and 2004 respectively.

With less scope for variation in point totals, relegation has been decided by this measure five times in nineteen seasons.

Needless to say, there are caveats to these raw numbers.

There’s nothing in the numbers to show the effect of having an inferior goal difference. This is particularly true at the bottom of the table, and you only need to look at last season when Birmingham were forced to commit players forward in the final minutes of the season in the knowledge they were going down on goals scored. They duly conceded a late winner.

There are probably other examples in similarly dramatic relegation battles.

In mid-table, it’s perhaps important to note that each position carries an extra £757,000; last season Newcastle were more than £1.5m better off than Bolton simply for having a marginally better goal difference.

Goal difference has proved largely unimportant at the top of the league though, simply because these teams deal in victories and not damage limitation. In tight competition, most teams would look to secure three points first before focusing on their goal difference.

Even so, it’s still a little remarkable that so few important positions, not least the title, have required more than points as a positional discriminator.

This perhaps gives some support to teams at the top who take their foot off the pedal at two or three-nil; the majority of the time you’re better off resting important players to prepare for the next match than trying to ‘improve your goal difference’, if such a dilemma exists.

Some may point to psychological effects of having an inferior goal difference, with the thought of it being worth half a point influencing some teams to play differently. Without going into any great research, I can’t imagine this effect being hugely significant.

That’s not to say goal difference is a useless statistic, it’s usually a pretty good indicator of the direction a team is going, and something to keep half an eye on.

But as a means to separate teams, history has suggested that it’s far more important at the bottom of the table than at the top, and certainly not something for the best teams to concern themselves with at this early stage.

*From 1992-1998 only the title winners qualified automatically, with the Premier League’s allocation increasing from 1999 onwards.