Despite injury woes and relegation fears, Tottenham have outperformed themselves for a fifth consecutive season

Tottenham Hotspur’s hopes of survival have been significantly boosted over the last week.

It’s been a tragic campaign for Spurs, and with just three games of the season left to play, there’s still a chance of a first-ever relegation from the Premier League.

Victory over Aston Villa last weekend, coupled with West Ham’s 3-0 defeat at Brentford, saw Spurs climb out of the bottom three for the first time in three weeks, and that returns their London rivals as the favourites to be relegated.

Roberto De Zerbi has picked up seven points from his first four games in charge and appears to be getting a tune out of a heavily injury-stricken squad, which is something both Thomas Frank and Igor Tudor failed to do before him.

But the job isn’t done yet, with Leeds next up for De Zerbi’s men, while the Hammer host league leaders Arsenal at London Stadium on Sunday.

But while it’s been a season to forget for Spurs fans, even if survival is achieved, data analysed by a no deposit bonus casino site shows that it could have been a whole lot worse.

Spurs have scored 45 goals this season, which is only one more than their worst goal-scoring season, in 1996/1997. That kind of return certainly supports their league position at this stage.

But Tottenham have actually heavily overachieved with that goal return, as their xG is actually 36.4. That means Spurs have overachieved their xG by 8.6 goals, or 23.63%. That makes them the biggest xG overachievers in the league, just ahead of already relegated Burnley (+18.4% xG).

One of the major positives of this is the fact that Spurs have had a lot of injuries to contend with this season, not least to the likes of Dejan Kulusevski, Mohammed Kudus, Dominic Solanke and James Maddison. That has reduced their creativity in the final third all season, but they’ve still done very well in front of goal when opportunities have presented themselves.

Had they failed to take as many of those chances, we might already be talking about the relegation battle being over.

Instead, Spurs could end the coming weekend four points ahead of West Ham with two games left to play, and will have Premier League survival all but secured.

However, this isn’t anything new for Spurs. The North Londoners have outperformed their xG in each of the previous five seasons, with 2021/2022 being their most successful season in that department as they exceeded their xG by a whopping 26.3% to score 68 goals and secure a third-placed finish.