In Matchweek 6 this season, eight goals were scored in the 90th minute or later - and that was just in the Saturday matches. Here, Ali Tweedale of Opta Analyst explores why we are seeing a sudden surge of strikes in the closing stages.
The 2025/26 season is producing more late drama than any other campaign in Premier League history.
Over the last few years we have seen more late goals. Seven of the 10 latest goals on record in the Premier League (since 2006/07) have been scored since the start of 2023/24, when we started to see an increase in stoppage time at the end of each half, in a bid to combat time-wasting. And this season in particular, there has been more action than usual in the closing stages of Premier League matches.
But while games are generally longer these days, that fact alone doesn’t explain what has happened this season. The 2025/26 campaign is producing more goals in the 90th minute or later than any other season in Premier League history, but there’s more: a higher proportion of games are being decided by 90th-minute winners than ever before.
Matches are now being played for longer
It’s logical that longer games would lead to more late action, but even so, this season has been extreme. Games are lasting over 100 minutes on average for only the second time in Premier League history, but they are still more than a minute shorter than they were two seasons ago.
And yet, we’ve seen more late goals this season than ever before on average. A goal is being scored in the "final minute" (90th minute or later) every 2.9 games, which is more often than any other Premier League season, just ahead of 2023/24 (every 3.4 games).
In 2023/24, more goals were scored than in any other season. Games were longer, and so more goals were scored late on in games, too.
The difference this season is that goals are being scored at their lowest rate (2.6 goals per game) in more than a decade. With that in mind, games being longer shouldn’t necessarily mean an increase in stoppage-time goals, and yet they are more common than ever before.
It follows that this season has the highest proportion of all goals scored in the 90th minute or later (13.2 per cent) – at least 4.2 per cent higher than any other season (with 2023/24 producing the second-highest rate).
It is difficult to explain with any certainty why this is the case. Why are we seeing fewer goals overall but more 90th-minute goals?
Improved squad depth and the rise of set-pieces
It may just be a quirk of being seven games into the season. It may be that teams are fitter than ever before and, with deeper squads, they are making better use of being able to make five substitutions.
Perhaps the intensity of the football being played this season means defenders, who are less likely to have been substituted, are tiring late on in games more than before.
We’ve also seen a widespread and increased focus on set-pieces across the board in the Premier League this season, and perhaps tired defences are struggling to deal with more thought-out set-play routines late on in games.
This season has indeed seen an increase in 90th-minute set-piece goals, from one every 15 games in 2024/25 to one every 10 games in 2025/26.
Closer games means teams are pushing forward late on
Another explanation is that the lower rate of goals has meant games are tighter this season than they have been in recent years. There has been more at stake during second-half stoppage time than in other recent seasons, so teams are encouraged to push forward for the win late on.
That may have been part of the reason that, as well as more goals at the end of games, we’re also seeing a huge increase in the number of 90th-minute winners.
Of the 24 last-minute goals scored in the Premier League this season, 10 have turned a draw into a win. As a proportion, that’s 41.7 per cent, the highest in Premier League history.
Most incredibly, 14.3 per cent of all games this season have been decided by a 90th-minute winner, which is more than twice as high as any other season in the Premier League era.
The highest it has ever been before in any full season is 7.1 per cent in 2023/24, the season in which, as already noted, stoppage-time was at its longest.
Over the years, Premier League games have steadily produced more and more goals. It follows that the average goal margin between teams in games has gone up.
That reached an all-time high in 2023/24 of 1.58. Excluding draws, the average margin of victory was 2.02 that season, which was also the highest the Premier League has ever had.
However, the average winning margin is now at its lowest in a decade, with teams separated by an average of 1.34 goals in 2025/26.
It appears, so far at least, that there are no easy victories against teams at the bottom of the table this season, and big wins are rarer.
The last season that had an average winning margin as low as it is now was 2015/16, when there was no runaway leader and the Premier League's best teams were so evenly matched that the title was unexpectedly won by Leicester City.
That all means that when the fourth official is preparing the board to announce how much stoppage-time will be played, Premier League games are in the balance more often.
As a result, there is more on the line late on in games this season, and there is plenty of second-half stoppage-time to find a winner, too.
Liverpool have already been on both sides of a 90th-minute winner on two occasions this season, having scored in stoppage time in wins over Newcastle United (3-2) and Burnley (1-0), before conceding in the last minute of 2-1 defeats to Crystal Palace and Chelsea.
Watch: ALL of Liverpool's late winners this season
Arsenal won 2-1 at Newcastle thanks to Gabriel Magalhaes’ 96th-minute strike, and also rescued a draw against Manchester City with a last-gasp equaliser from Gabriel Martinelli.
Man City haven’t yet scored a 90th-minute winner this season, but if they were to add a few of them to their tally, it might be enough to drag them into the title battle. Without Liverpool’s two late winners, they wouldn’t be, as they are now, within touching distance of top spot.
It’s early days, and this trend might not continue for the whole season, but until it stops, fans in the stands and watching around the world are advised to stay right until the very end or risk missing something very significant indeed.