The Bundesliga is back baby! And those craving the return of top tier football are in luck – for the German top flight might well be the most exciting league in Europe.

Spreadex has crunched the numbers and taken a look at how the Bundesliga stacks up to the rest of the continent’s Big 5. And in perhaps the most important metric, the German division is head and shoulders above the competition.

Across the last 5 seasons, the Bundesliga has seen an average of 2.98 goals per game. That puts it ahead of Serie A’s 2.76, the Premier League’s 2.74 La Liga’s 2.70 and Ligue 1’s lowly 2.59.

That difference is even starker this season. Thanks to the likes of Robert Lewandowski, Timo Werner, Jadon Sancho and Erling Braut Haaland – who has 9 league goals in just 8 appearances since joining Borussia Dortmund – the Bundesliga has averaged an impressive 3.25 goals per game. That’s 0.53 more goals per game than the Premier League!

In fact, in 4 of the past 5 seasons the Bundesliga has come out on top, only relinquishing the crown of most average goals per game in 2016/17, when La Liga nudged into 1st place thanks in part to Lionel Messi’ astonishing 37 goal haul.

Not that the Germans have it all their own way. In terms of the average number of corners per game across the last 5 seasons, the Bundesliga sits at 9.67, well off Serie A with 10.62. It also puts Germany behind the Premier League, which has managed an average of 10.54 corners per game.

When just looking at 2019/20, the Premier League actually comes on top with 10.88 corners per game against the Bundesliga’s 10.22 – that’s 0.66 more corners per game. Interestingly, for both English and German leagues those are the highest tallies out of the 5 seasons studied.

But what about bookings? Across 5 seasons the Bundesliga has seen an average of 40.48 bookings points per game, where it is 10 points for a yellow card, 25 for a red, with an individual player capped at a maximum of 35 points.

While that puts the league well behind the frankly alarming stats out of La Liga and Serie A, which have an average of 57.34 and 53.72 respectively, the German league is notably above the Premier League’s 36.04.

Focus on 2019/20, and the Bundesliga’s average of 44 bookings points per game – its highest total in 5 season – is even further ahead of the Premier League’s 38.1.