Plymouth's Numbers Don't Add Up

The table says fifth. The chances say sixteenth. Eleven games into the English Premier Division season, Plymouth Argyle have twenty points where the quality of the chances in those games points to fourteen — a surplus of six that no coach can bank on indefinitely.

Clarimundo Cruz Moraes, in charge since July 2060, has built a side that takes what it gets. Fifteen goals from chances worth 11.9 is a surplus of 3.1, the work of forwards who have been unusually clean in front of goal. At the other end the picture is stranger still: fourteen conceded from chances worth 16.3, a saving of 2.3 that speaks to a goalkeeper in form and defenders who clear what they should not have allowed.

Both are real. Neither is a plan. The league's expected table is unforgiving: Chelsea lead it on 29.5, Liverpool and Arsenal sit level on 20.2, and Plymouth's 14.0 places them among the sides scrapping near the bottom. Rotherham United, on 16.9, have twenty-two points; Arsenal, on 20.2, have fifteen. The division this season rewards the teams that make the better chances, and punishes those that do not.

Plymouth know the other side of that. The Carabao Cup exit to Chesterfield last month, on penalties after a 2-2 draw, was a night when a changed side could not turn territory into safety. The same fragility has been visible in Europe's midweek rounds, where English clubs have found the margins tighter than their domestic form suggests.

Nothing here is a crisis. Fifth place is fifth place, and a team that finishes its chances and defends its box is not lucky by definition. But the surplus is the story of the autumn, and Moraes will know that the chances, eventually, have their say.