I collected the data from the ten main European football leagues (according to the UEFA country ranking), to analyze which are the ones with the highest numbers of goals scored. For each league, I consider the number of goals per game, the percentage of games with a number of goals over 1,5, 2,5 and 3,5, and the percentage of draws. In this post on my blog, you can see the complete table. The data relate to the matches played this season, 2014-2015. At the moment, the league with the highest number of goals scored is the Dutch Eredivisie, while the French Ligue 1 has the lowest. German Bundesliga is the league with the highest number of draws.
It would be interesting (and maybe time consuming) to look at the standard deviation of goals scored for each league. The over 1.5, 2.5, and 3.5 columns allow you to tell what percent had 2 goals and what percent had 3 goals. Those are the two numbers closest to the mean for most of the leagues. England had a lower than average (among the ten leagues) percent of games with 2 or 3 goals, so I would expect England to have a higher standard deviation. For England I made a spreadsheet for 2007-2008 with how many wins, draws, and losses each club had while scoring 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4+ and while allowing 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4+ goals. In that season there were: 218 times when a club scored 0 276 times when a club scored 1 154 times when a club scored 2 60 times when a club scored 3 52 times when a club scored 4+ This adds up to 760 because there are 380 games with two clubs in each game.
In this table there are some data about the ten leagues, ordered by the standard deviation from the average goals per game. The last two columns are the percentages of matches with 2 or 3 goals scored.
In the following table there are the goals scored per game in the main 10 European leagues, considering the last 5 seasons plus the current one until today. You can also see the trend for each league. Dutch Eredivisie is the league where most goals per game are scored every season. This season, England and Spain have a decrease compared to all the previous 5 years. Belgium and Portugal are the only ones that have an increment in respect to the last season.
Wow, Germany went up into the 3 goals per game last year? The play was almost as open as the dutch league according to these stats. Any conjectures as to why?
Said that the average goals of Bundesliga has always been higher than the others (with the exception of Netherlands), last year was especially good. Considering the sum of the goals scored and conceded by a single team in the last 5 seasons in Bundesliga, the average is around 99. Last year, Hoffenheim scored and conceded a total of 142 goals, which is way higher: it is 3,91 standard deviation above the average. The second team in this ranking is last year's Hamburg, with 126 goals (2,46 SD above the average). These two teams "helped" the last season's total to surge. Considering the last 5 years' full ranking of the sum of goals scored and conceded, in the first 10 positions we find 5 teams of 2013/14, while in the last 30 positions there are only 2 teams of 2013/14, so almost all the teams did "well" in this statistic last season. This is the (pretty abnormal) frequency of the results for Hoffenheim last year: 0:0 1:0 1:1 (2) 2:0 (2) 2:1 (5) 2:2 (4) 3:0 3:1 (3) 3:2 (3) 3:3 (3) 4:0 (2) 4:1 (2) 4:2 4:4 5:1 6:2 (2)
These are the average goal trends updated at the end of this season, 2014-2015. Netherlands had the best result also this year, as usual, though their average decreased from 3,20 to 3,08. Germany fell from 3,16 to 2,75, and now they are third, having been surpassed by Belgium (2,78). England is now at 2,57, after having been stable for the past five seasons (between 2,77 and 2,81). Ukraine had the sixth consecutive season with an increment. Portugal had the best increment (from 2,37 to 2,49), but they are still low compared to the other countries.
Update for the 2015-2016 season. Until now, the only two leagues with a significant decrease compared to last year are Italian Serie A, which passed from an average of 2,69 to 2,53 (-6%) and Dutch Eredivisie (from 3,08 to 2,96, -4%). However, Eredivisie is still the top league as for the average number of goals scored. Portugal's Primeira Liga records the greatest increase (from 2,49 to 2,72, +9%). French Ligue 1 has the lowest average with 2,48 (and PSG scored 10% of the total goals).
These are the data at the end of the 2016-2017 campaign. I shortened the series to 5 years. The top league has been Italian Serie A, with an average of 2,96 goals scored. The lowest average has been the Russian Premier League's, with only 2,13 goals per match. These two leagues recorded also the largest increase and decrease, respectively, compared to the last campaign: Italy passed from 2,53 to 2,96 (+17%), while Russia fell from 2,50 to 2,13 (-14,8%). Overall, 5 leagues had an increase, and 5 a decrease.
The average of the ten numbers didn't change much from 2015-2016 to 2016-2017. It went from 2.680 to 2.677.
You're right, the global averages in the last 2 years were almost the same. I should have put it in the table (also for the previous years).