Wolves are taking all the negative headlines for their winless start in the Premier League but Burnley aren’t too far behind.
Scott Parker’s men look to be on the same path as their previous two appearances in the top flight of English football. They have repeated the script of going down and then coming back up after dominant campaigns in the Championship.
The Clarets won 100+ points in each of their last two seasons in the second tier (100 in 2024-25, 101 in 2022-23). But no more than 35 in each of their last two seasons in the Premier League (24 in 2023-24, 35 in 2021-22).
And they are currently on pace to winning just 23.8 points this year again, sitting 19th in the table, six points away from safety.
Burnley may be lucky that Wolverhampton Wanderers have won even fewer points, but there is an argument to be made that what is going on at Turf Moor might actually be worse.
What has gone wrong for Burnley in the Premier League this season?
Expectation vs reality
The Opta expected points model has Burnley 20th in the ‘justice table’, even behind Wolves, who are 19th.
In fact, the difference in expected points from Wolves to Burnley (+5.1) is larger than the gap from 19th-placed Wolves to 12th-placed Everton (20.4).
At the same time, it’s important to acknowledge that expected points isn’t a flawless metric. What matters is the ball finding the net and the Clarets have been much better (or less worse?) at that.
And even within the xPTS context, Burnley have won about the expected, underperforming their total by just 0.8. The problem is Wolves failing to capitalise on their chances, having won a whopping 13.9 points fewer than they ‘should’ have.
Shifting to reality, Burnley might be eight points ahead of Wolves, but they are still 19th, three points behind West Ham in 18th and six behind Leeds in 17th. And they are also in a seven-game losing streak – not too far off Wolves’ nine-game losing streak.
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Two of the Clarets’ three wins have come precisely against these opponents (Leeds and Wolves), but had fewer shots, big chances and expected goals in each of them. There was a nice win over Sunderland which gets even more impressive as time goes by, considering the realities for each of them.
That’s actually been a major issue for Scott Parker’s men. They have produced more xG than their opponent just three times this season in the Premier League. Wolves, for comparison’s sake, have done it twice as many times (6 – one of them against Burnley).
Recruitment
Burnley had an incredible season in the Championship last year, conceding just 16 goals across 46 games. Nobody expected them to carry this form over to the Premier League, but they haven’t helped themselves.
The board brought in 14 players last summer, 12 of them being new faces. Marcus Edwards and Jaidon Anthony had already joined the previous campaign.
It’s not a given that signing a lot of players and revamping the whole squad from one season to another won’t work. But signing a lot of players of which only two are Premier League-proven and both past their best (Kyle Walker and Martin Dubravka) is almost certainly not going to go well.
Add to that a manager whose experiences in the top flight have all led to and/or ended in relegation, it’s difficult to avoid the same fate. Not that Parker is fully to blame, we have only seen him in tough contexts and situations in the Premier League. But he doesn’t seem to be the man to overcome them and get more out of his teams than what they can give.
The Clarets are bottom-3 in points won, expected points, goals scored, goals conceded, possession, expected goals, shots taken, shots faced, expected goals against and big chances conceded.
Burnley are performing according to expectations and can feed off the luck of their relegation rivals’ underperformances.
Scott Parker still has much more of a chance than Rob Edwards to turn things around and force a survival push. But they have to improve quickly, otherwise their fate will be the same and as quickly-defined as Wolves’.