Brian Brobbey: 0.59 xG in four games, then 2.35 in one

Brobbey’s hat-trick at Manchester City wasn’t lucky finishing. It was the biggest chance haul of his Premier League career, by a distance.
The odd one
Sunderland
Gameweek 5
Author

Aryan Marjani

Published

October 12, 2026

3Goals at the Etihad
2.35xG in one game
0.59xG in GW1–4
1 in 2,607Appearances this big

The question

In gameweek 5 Brian Brobbey scored a hat-trick at the Etihad and still lost, 5-3. In his first four league games of the season he hadn’t scored once.

Hat-tricks from strikers who haven’t been scoring often turn out to be lucky finishing: three shots from distance that happen to go in. Henderson’s two goals from 0.08 xG in our last post were that kind of story. So was Brobbey’s?

The numbers say no. Something rarer happened. Brobbey didn’t finish better than usual. He got chances he had never had before.

Brian Brobbey in Sunderland's navy away kit during Brentford v Sunderland on 5 September 2026

Brobbey playing for Sunderland at Brentford, 5 September 2026. Photo: Timmy96 via Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (public domain), cropped.

The main chart

Brobbey had never had a game like it

Expected goals (xG) in every Premier League appearance since joining Sunderland. Ringed dots: he scored.

Figure 1: Brian Brobbey’s expected goals in every Premier League appearance since joining Sunderland, in order. Most are below 0.5 xG and his previous high is 1.06. The GW5 game at Manchester City stands alone at 2.35. Ringed dots: he scored. Hover any dot for the match.

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Each dot is one Premier League appearance, using the expected goals (xG) figures published by Fantasy Premier League. Before the trip to Manchester, Brobbey’s best single game was 1.06 xG. At the Etihad he had 2.35.

What the numbers say

We ran five calculations on the FPL data. The full working is in the box at the end of this section.

1. It was far outside his own range. In his 25 league games of 60+ minutes before this one, Brobbey averaged 0.24 xG. Against City he had 2.35, which is 7.6 standard deviations above his own average. He had 0.59 xG in total across gameweeks 1–4.

2. The hat-trick came from the chances, not the finishing. Three goals from 2.35 xG is only +0.65 above expectation. Treat 2.35 xG as an average rate of goals and the maths says a striker with those chances scores three or more about 42% of the time. From his typical 0.24 xG game, the same calculation gives 0.2%, about 1 in 490. The surprise is the chances. Once he had them, the goals were not that unlikely.

Figure 2: The probability of each goal total from Brobbey’s typical game (0.24 xG) and from his GW5 game (2.35 xG), using a Poisson model. The chance of three or more goals rises from 0.2% to 42%. Hover for exact figures.

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3. It is rare across the whole league. Since August 2025, 5 of 13,036 Premier League appearances reached 2.35 xG or more, including this one. That is 1 in 2,607, or about once every nine gameweeks across the entire league. Nobody topped it in gameweeks 1–5 of this season.

Figure 3: Every Premier League appearance with any xG since August 2025 (6,122 dots), placed by match xG. Almost all sit below 1 xG. Brobbey’s 2.35 is highlighted in red; only four 2025-26 appearances are further right. Hover any dot; drag to zoom.

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4. One game rewrote his season. His xG per 90 minutes was 0.17 after gameweek 4 and 0.66 after gameweek 5, and this one match is 80% of his season xG. That is the small-sample trap in a single number. Any season average for him this year mostly reflects one afternoon.

5. He out-created his own team. Brobbey’s 2.35 xG was 65% of Sunderland’s 3.62 that day. It was 1.5 times Sunderland’s average team total over gameweeks 1–4 (1.55), and higher than their team total in any other match in gameweeks 1–5.

Figure 4: Sunderland’s xG in each match of gameweeks 1–5, split into Brobbey and the rest of the team. In GW5 Brobbey’s share alone is larger than any other match total. Hover for the numbers.

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  • Distance from his normal: z = (2.35 − 0.24) ÷ 0.28, where 0.24 and 0.28 are the mean and standard deviation of his xG in 25 league games of 60+ minutes (2025-26 and 2026-27 gameweeks 1–4). Per-game xG is skewed, so read +7.6 as “extremely far”, not as an exact probability.
  • Hat-trick probability: a Poisson model with the match xG as its average, λ. P(3 or more) = 1 − e^−λ(1 + λ + λ²/2). This is an approximation. Exact figures need xG for each shot, which FPL doesn’t publish, and one of his goals was reportedly an empty-net chance.
  • Rarity: appearances with xG ≥ 2.35 divided by all appearances of 1+ minute in 2025-26 and 2026-27 gameweeks 1–5 (5 ÷ 13,036). All 2026-27 figures in this post stop at the end of gameweek 5.
  • xG per 90: total xG ÷ minutes × 90.
  • The code behind every chart and figure is kept on file and can be re-run. Subscribers can ask for it: subscribe for the code.

The record books noticed too. Reuters and SoccerNews both reported that he was the first Sunderland player to score a Premier League hat-trick since Jermain Defoe in 2016. Afterwards Brobbey told Sky Sports: “It’s hard being on the losing side when you’re scoring three goals.”

What they do not say

Why the chances came. FPL data gives one xG number per player per match. It doesn’t show where the shots were taken, how they were created, or whether City’s defending or Brobbey’s movement made the difference. We’d need shot-level data to say anything about that, so we don’t.

That one goal was a gift. According to Reuters’ match report, one of his goals went into an empty net. A chance like that carries a very high xG, so part of the 2.35 came from a single moment rather than a pattern.

That this is a new Brobbey. It is one match, against a baseline of four early-season games and a 2025-26 season he spent partly as a substitute. One game is not a trend. We can’t test it yet either: FPL lists him with a hamstring injury, expected back on 25 October (as of 12 October).

Three takeaways

  1. This was not lucky finishing. With 2.35 xG, a hat-trick happens about 42% of the time. From his normal game it happens 0.2% of the time. The chances were the unusual part.
  2. It was a career and league outlier. It was 7.6 standard deviations above his own average, more than double his previous best, and a 1-in-2,607 appearance across the league.
  3. Watch the next few games. When he returns, the question is whether Sunderland can find him in those positions again, or whether the Etihad was a one-off. Until then, treat it as one remarkable afternoon.

Sources and licences

  • Fantasy Premier League API (fantasy.premierleague.com/api): 2026-27 player match data, including xG. Used for all four charts, every calculation, and every figure for this season. Terms: FPL Terms & Conditions. Permission to publish charts built from this data: unverified.
  • vaastav/Fantasy-Premier-League (GitHub): 2025-26 FPL match data, used for last-season figures in charts 1, 2 and 4. The repository is under the MIT licence, but the data originates from FPL, so the FPL terms also apply.
  • Reuters, via BusinessDay: Semenyo double lifts Man City in 5-3 thriller, 20 Sep 2026. Source for the result, the empty-net goal and the Defoe record. Facts summarised in our own words.
  • SoccerNews: Hat-trick hero Brobbey concedes…. Source for the Brobbey quote (originally to Sky Sports) and second source for the Defoe record. Short quotation with attribution.
  • Photo: Brobbey at Brentford v Sunderland, 5 September 2026, by Timmy96 via Wikimedia Commons, released into the public domain under CC0, cropped.
  • Charts and calculations: made by SimPitch from the data above (Poisson model and z-scores as described in “How we worked it out”). © simpitch.co.uk.

Corrections

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NoteCite this article

SimPitch (2026). Brian Brobbey: 0.59 xG in four games, then 2.35 in one. simpitch.co.uk, 12 October 2026. https://simpitch.co.uk/weekly-analysis/posts/odd-gw5-brobbey/