Winning and losing streaks can provide some insightful information to our favourite sports and games. Football has an abundance of records across a plethora of leagues for you to behold. Other games like roulette are notorious for having a whopping 32 consecutive win streak. Whether you play CS:GO roulette, European, French or American – it’s hard not to admire how lucky this person was.
Casting our minds back to 2016, when Aston Villa were relegated to the English Championship, it meant that one of the teams with the highest appearances in the English Premier League were being chased down to the lower division. Their campaign was not successful, yes, but it was also crowned with a negative record. They witnessed an 11 match losing streak, which trumped the 9 games losing streak record that Sunderland experienced in 2006.
When we look at positive streak records, we consider what Juventus did in Serie A. They recorded a 15 game winning streak that broke the existing 14 game streak record that Inter Milan set in 2007. Juve would have been looking at a 26 game winning streak in the Serie A, if not for the draw with Bologna that thwarted the effort in the middle of their run.
However, the records that Juventus and Aston Villa set are nothing new in a season with the 4 most popular European leagues. So to take a good look at the numbers that have been churned out in these leagues, we made an analysis of each of the seasons from 2003/2004 to 2014/2015, and the result is explained below.
Premier League
Within the period under review, four teams won the English Premier League, and Manchester United succeeded in achieving 11 winning streaks in 2008/2009, while Liverpool achieved the same in 2013/2014. When you look at the other clubs that also contended for the title during the period, you will witness up to 5 considerable winning streaks for Chelsea and Arsenal, while Manchester City witnessed just one streak.
When you check the flip side, the highest losing streaks witnessed in the league went to Reading and Wigan that experienced 2 streaks within the 3 longest losing streaks in the league’s history. Within the same period, Sunderland lost 9 games in a row in 2006. Also, Aston Villa which had a very dismal campaign in the last season having lost 7 games on the bounce.
When you consider the league’s total streaks, you will see that experiencing two defeats in a row became more usual than having two victories in a row. However, 4 and 5 victories were more usually experienced in a row than 4 and 5 defeats in a row. Also, the distribution of the streaks within the 1st and 2nd halves of the season shows an almost even record, save for the longest winning streaks, which was witnessed more in the 2nd half of the season.
La Liga
Many people claim that the Spanish top flight is not as competitive as the EPL because it is dominated by only Barcelona and Real Madrid. So, when we consider winning streaks, you’ll find when you compare it to the top English clubs, a more frequent longer winning streak is the norm in Spain, which confirms that there is less competition between the clubs compared to the Premier League.
However, in the Spanish League it’s more common place to find longer losing streaks compared to England. Furthermore, just like the EPL, there is an even distribution of the streaks between both halves of the seasons. However, against the EPL, the first half of the season witnessed almost all the longest streaks.
Serie A
During the period under consideration, there were two very distinct moments in the Italian league. The first moment came after the 2006 Calciopoli scandal that saw bans imposed on some clubs, and during which Inter Milan dominated the league by winning the title 5 times in a row. The second came after Inter Milan had an amazing campaign in 2010, and when its decline started, Juventus started its own dominance in the league by grabbing four consecutive titles.
Also, while the period under review lasted, the title was won by AC Milan twice, while Roma finished as runners up 7 times. So, when you consider their winning streak under this period, you will see that the largest streak goes to Inter Milan, though Juventus have currently surpassed that. When you flip the table, some clubs, like Pescara have the unwanted record of losing 8 games in a row.
Bundesliga
In the entire sample, the Bundesliga is the league that has experienced more champions. However, the league was not just won by Bayern in most of the seasons; it also experienced more outstanding streaks than its competitors. When you consider the winning streaks for the clubs that were in the first 2 positions, you will see that the longest winning streaks in the four leagues under consideration goes to Bayern with 19 wins in a row.
At the other end of the table, there is a huge similarity between the Bundesliga and the EPL, as they both have more clubs within 7 and 9 defeats in a row, compared to La Liga and Serie A. The longest losing streak went to Hannover ’96 with 9 defeats in a row, with Stuttgart and Hertha Berlin coming second with 8 each.
Considering the total streaks in the league, a pattern shows that more losing streaks were witnessed until the 5th games and higher winning streaks after the 5th games. However, the 14 and 19 winning streaks that Bayern achieved in 2012/2013 and 2013/2014 outlines the German sample, revealing how superior the club was amongst the others in those two seasons.
It’s also worth noting that Bayern had less games to achieve their feat as they only play 34 matches in the Bundesliga compared to the 38 played in the other major leagues.
Overview
The losing and winning streaks in the top four leagues revealed the level of superiority, balance, and difficulty that bottom and top placed clubs experienced in the leagues. Through this, we can conclude that more short losing streaks and more long winning streaks are common. This shows that in the leagues, there is more balance among weaker teams than among stronger teams.
