Tottenham Unbeaten when Dele scores in Premier League: Part 3 A Goal Fiesta

In Part 1, I looked at the big pictures statistics, of the 33 unbeaten Premier League games for Tottenham Hotspur when Dele Alli scores, where the Spurs win at an .800 rate.

Then in Part 2, I established the significance of Dele’s goals, where according to Transfer Markt Dele has scored the game winning goal 14 times out of his 38 Premier League goals and has nine goals against the rest of the Big 6.

As I detailed in Part 2, this means Dele’s goals are the winner in more than 1/3 of his goals. What is interesting about this, is that only two of those 14 goals were the last goal in the game. In other words, when Dele scores, we can expect more goals, and usually all for Tottenham.

Dele’s goals and goals in the game

In 12 of 14 instances Dele has scored what ultimately was the game winning goal, Tottenham have gone on to score again. This seems to indicate Tottenham receive a lift when Dele scores with a clear trend of scoring again after a Dele goal. This is supported by the fact that only in the five 1-1 draws where Dele has scored, have Spurs failed to score multiple goals. Further, Tottenham have NEVER won a Premier League game 1-0 where Dele was the only goal scorer. Based on the 33 games where he has scored, we can expect more goals to follow.

Although, Spurs have never won 1-0 with Dele as the lone scorer, it is not like there haven’t been chances for it to happen. Beyond the three opening goals that resulted in ties, Dele has scored 7 other goals opening the scoring in a Tottenham Hotspur Premier League match.  So, Dele has scored 10 opening goals for Spurs, and I have established that none of these matches ended up 1-0, so what happens? Typically, Spurs roll.

Well, the combined scores across these 10 matches is 21 to 3, with all 3 goals coming in the three 1-1 draws. This means in the 7 wins where Dele has scored first, Spurs have gone on to win 18-0. 7 shut-outs and all multiple goal games. This means beyond the .800 winning percentage overall, when Dele scores; if Dele scores the opener, Tottenham win at a 70% clip. This is just the 10-match sample where Dele scores first, which accounts for 7 of his 14 overall game winning goals, but it does seem meaningful.

With 17 of his 38 goals 45% being either the first goal or game winner and having established that more than 50%, 20 of 38, of Dele’s goals have directly impacted the result, that means still nearly half of his goals, 18 of 38, were part of a larger result, does this mean they were not significant?  I don’t think so.

Dele’s Braces

Five of the 18 non-game-winning or tying goals, came on days when Dele himself was the one who padded the score line scoring a brace on those five occasions. Digging into those five games where Alli has scored a brace he either tied the game or scored the winner 3 times, Matchdays 18 and 20 in 2016-17 against Southampton and Chelsea respectively, and Matchday 32 in 17-18 also against Chelsea. We won all three of these matches, with a combined score of 9-2.  Dele’s other two-goal matches came on  Matchday 34 vs Stoke City in 2015 and Matchday 19 vs Watford in 2016-17. On these two days, 4-0 and 4-1 wins, all eight goals were scored by Harry Kane and Dele Alli. Not to mention, Tottenham have always won when Dele scores twice across this five-game sample.

This takes us to Dele’s other 13 of 38 goals which neither tied the game, or were game winners. Essentially there were goals where Dele was just adding to the score line, in other words meaningless goals in terms of the outcome for the game. That said, these 13 goals were all in victories where the combined score across the 13 games was 34-4, like I said a Tottenham goal fiesta.

Of course, with the race for the top 4 always so close, goal differential matters. The bottom line here is when Dele scores expect more scoring to occur and chances are the Spurs are going score again.

The total score line, in these 27 wins and 6 draws where Dele has scored, is 92 goals for Tottenham and 21 against. This is a 2.78 goals per game average and a .64 goals per game against. Like I said, goal fiesta, at least for Tottenham.

In part 4 of this series I’ll explore when during the game and where, whether home or way, Dele has scored those 38 goals in Premier League play.