Fewer crosses, more passes and the death of the piledriver: how Premier League goalscoring has changed

When Crystal Palace scored a glorious team goal against Brighton last month, it was rightly heralded as proof of their development as a side under Patrick Vieira. All 11 players touched the ball in the slick 20-pass move, which ended with Conor Gallagher thumping the ball into the corner of Brighton’s net.

It was the sort of goal that would never have been scored by Palace teams of the recent past. This was the new Palace, playing a modern brand of football that rarely felt possible under the guidance of previous manager Roy Hodgson, or Sam Allardyce before him.

This evolution of the playing style, and the shift towards a more progressive approach, is by no means a Palace phenomenon, though. Across the Premier League, teams have adopted a highly-technical, ball-playing approach en masse: of the current 20 sides in the top flight, at least 15 can be described as wanting to play with a “modern”, possession-based, high-pressing system.

The consequence of this is a drastic shift in the way goals are scored in the top flight. With better pitches and more advanced coaching, the game has become slicker than ever — and this evolution is being reflected in the most important aspect of the game: putting the ball in the opposition’s net.

One of the most striking developments has been the dramatic rise in the number of team goals, such as Gallagher’s, over the past 15 years. In 2007/08, the first season in which Opta began recording such data, there were only 25 goals scored at the end of moves of 10 passes or more. Last season, there were 90.