Brentford are fourth and unbeaten after five games, but new CIES data ranks them 19th for their overall ability to dictate matches.
Brentford went into the international break unbeaten, fourth in the Premier League and with their best-ever five-game start to a Premier League season, but one new set of data places them 19th among the top flight.
The CIES Football Observatory has ranked clubs across 68 leagues using what it calls a "game dictating index", designed to measure how much sides impose themselves on matches. Keith Andrews' team score 43.5, with only Hull City below them among Premier League clubs.
Manchester City lead the division, much like in the League table with 80.1, followed closely by Tottenham and Arsenal.
CIES picked Brentford out when publishing the study, largely because their league position looks so different to their place in the index. The researchers described their approach as "less dominant and more opportunistic". Despite the approach, the Bees are producing results.
That has certainly been the case through the opening five games.
Brentford began with a 3-0 win over Tottenham at the Gtech Community Stadium and followed it with draws against Leeds United, Sunderland and Bournemouth. Chelsea were then beaten 3-0 before the international break, taking Andrews' side to nine points.
The index looks at more than just possession stats across the opening matches.
CIES uses 27 different indicators, with nine covering pressure on opponents, nine looking at control during build-up and another nine measuring collective presence in attacking areas. Pressure looks at how aggressively a team works without the ball, control measures how much command they have during build-up, and occupation reflects how much collective presence they establish in attacking areas.
The Football Observatory, part of the International Centre for Sports Studies in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, has been publishing research on team performance, transfers, player values and squad construction for more than a decade. Brentford score 48 for pressure and 42 for control, while their lowest mark comes in the final category, where they score 32 for what CIES terms "occupation".
Brentford's low occupation score comes alongside an attacking return of 10 goals from their first five league matches.
The Bees have registered 81 attempts and 59 shots from inside the penalty area before the International break, both of which ranked inside the Premier League's top four.
Those are different measures to the CIES index, but they provide some useful context that the Bees have not needed to dominate every phase of a game to create chances.
The Tottenham win was one of Brentford's more aggressive performances. Vitaly Janelt described the team as "very front-footed" afterwards, with Andrews' side two goals ahead by half-time before adding a third after the break.
Chelsea was a different kind of game. There were few clear chances during the first half, but Brentford scored three times after the interval through Jaidon Anthony, Igor Thiago and Fábio Carvalho.
CIES' own description of Brentford as less dominant and more opportunistic fits more comfortably with that second type of performance.
The numbers also underline how different Brentford's profile is from the teams at the top of the index. City, Tottenham and Arsenal all score heavily across pressure, build-up control and attacking occupation, while Andrews' side have reached fourth place without doing so.
Brentford's next Premier League game comes away to Aston Villa on October 10, when they will return from the International break still unbeaten. Liverpool, who are also unbeaten, then visit the Gtech Community Stadium a week later as Brentford resume a league campaign that has so far brought nine points from five games.
