How do Sheffield Wednesday's number stack up in the Championship?

A fine start to 2019/20 saw Sheffield Wednesday dreaming of promotion at the end of 2019, now things aren’t so rosy, but how do the Owls compare to the other Championship clubs statistically?

Garry Monk’s side find themselves in a distinctly average position in many stats across the division – neither too impressive nor too shocking – although certain aspects do point towards individual errors across the park.

In terms of the most important stat, Wednesday find themselves in 15th place in the league with 46 goals, substantially lower than their shots per game average of 13.1 places them (7th).

Meanwhile, 14 teams in the league have more possession on average than SWFC (47.8%), and 17 of them have a better pass completion rate (47.8%), suggesting that the ball has been given away too often and not retained as well as Monk would have hoped.

And speaking of passes, Wednesday have made 13,123 passes in their 37 games to date, with only Wigan Athletic, Birmingham City, Hull City, Middlesbrough, Millwall and Cardiff City having made less.

An area where the Owls do excel is in terms of aerial battles, which is not too much of a surprise with players like Atdhe Nuhiu, Steven Fletcher and Dominic Iorfa in their ranks, with Monk’s men averaging 27.4 aerials won per game - the sixth-highest return in the league.

A less pleasing stat for the Owls is that another area they excel in is the foul department… No team in the Championship has made more fouls than Wednesday (570) and they average 15.4 per match.

Another interesting statistic suggests that the Owls have been unlucky in terms of the amount of goals scored and conceded in their games, with their 1.19 xG against ratio in the Championship lower than the 1.32 per game actually conceded, and their goals scored (1.2 per game) less than their xG of 1.32.

It remains to be seen when Monk and his players will be able to get back in training, though it does appear that it could still be some time away…