Correlation FC

Bees draw with Wolves, 2-2

The Bees started strong early in the first half. Michael Kayode scored his first goal as a Bee, followed up shortly thereafter by Igor Thiago, who scored his first goal since being named to the Brazilian team for the upcoming international break. Unfortunately, a 44th minute goal by Wolves seemed to changed the momentum, and in the end, a 2-2 draw was the best the Bees could get out of the match.

What was different

Kayode scores

Right-back Kayode scored the opening goal, heading in Keane Lewis-Potter's perfect cross. This was Kayode's first goal for Brentford in his 41st Premier League appearance. He's the 12th Bee to score in the league this season.

Now that Kayode has scored, there are only three outfield players who have played in the league this season, but haven't scored for the Bees.

Reiss Nelson came very close to scoring his first league goal for the Bees in the dying seconds of the game, but his header missed the far post by inches.

High expected goal total, but no win

The Bees have created many chances this season and have regularly generated high expected goal (xG) totals in their games. This game was no different, with the Bees earning a xG value of 2.56 against Wolves, their sixth highest of the season.

Up until this game, they had won their 9 previous outings when they had picked up an xG of 1.99 or more, regardless of what xG total their opponent had.

Brentford 2025-26 Premier League expected goals and results (source: Correlation FC)

As the chart shows, the Bees have ended up with great results whenever they have a high xG totals - this shouldn't be a surprise. They've had less positive results when they haven't created high xG totals, also not too surprising.

Expected results vs actual results

We thought it would be interesting to see how Brentford's expected results compared to their actual results.

Expected result is not a commonly used metric. We've determined the expected result by saying that:

We've run the number's for Brentford's games, and come up with the following analysis.

Brentford 2025-26 Premier League expected and actual results (source: Correlation FC)

To compare expected and actual results, we just do a simple comparison. If, for example, a team was expected to lose and they lost, that would mean the expected and actual results were the same. If they were expected to lose and then drew or won the game, that would be better than expected. Similarly, if they were expected to draw or win the game, and then they lost, that would be worse than expected.

So far this season, Brentford has had 14 results as expected, 7 results better than expected and 8 results worse than expected.