Win to Nil vs BTTS & Win in the major European leagues

George Graham’s pragmatic Arsenal outfit of the late 1980s/early 1990s and Kevin Keegan’s swashbuckling Newcastle United side of the mid-1990s provide us with two very different examples of how to win football matches.

Whilst the Gunners reigned supreme in the win to nil market, often triumphing courtesy of the only goal of proceedings, the Magpies were masters of the both teams to score and win game, adopting a ‘we’ll score more than you’ approach.

At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong way to pick up maximum points, but we thought it might be interesting to take a look back at the 2025/26 season across some of Europe’s top leagues in order to establish which method of victory proved to be most popular.

WIN TO NIL

Across the top-flights in England, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Czechia and Turkiye, 23.33% of games resulted in a win to nil for the home team.

Ligue 1 was the competition in which you were most likely to see such a result, with Paris Saint-Germain (11), Lens (8) and Lyon (8) making a significant contribution to the 26.47% of matches that ended this way:

As you might expect, it was not quite so easy for away teams to win to nil, with just 16.10% of games ending this way across the featured ten European leagues.

Serie A somewhat bucked the trend, however, with Inter Milan (10), Napoli (7), Roma (7), AC Milan (7) and Juventus (7) all contributing to an impressive figure of 21.84%, perhaps proving that the art of defending has not been lost amongst the better teams in Italy:

Whilst Ligue 1 and Serie A took top billing at home and away, respectively, it was Portugal’s Primeira Liga that served up the highest percentage of win to nil contests overall at 45.42%.

Coming in just ahead of its Italian counterpart and significantly above the ten-league average of 39.43%, Porto (20), Sporting Lisbon (15), Benfica (12) and Braga (12) contributed 59 such victories between them:

In terms of football betting tips, the evidence of last season certainly suggests that backing French giants on their own patch, Italian heavyweights on the road and Portuguese behemoths anywhere is the way to go when it comes to the win to nil market.

BTTS & WIN

When it comes to making football predictions of the btts and win variety, it is worth noting that 19.84% of games were won in this fashion by home teams last season across the ten European leagues that we have considered.

The highest percentages of such results were found in La Liga (23.68%), the Eredivisie (23.53%) and the Bundesliga (23.20%), with PSV Eindhoven (11), Real Madrid (10), Villarreal (10), Barcelona (9) and Bayern Munich (9) proving to be particularly successful:

Somewhat unsurprisingly, just 14.63% of matches across these ten European leagues during the 2025/26 campaign ended in a victory for the away side in which they also failed to keep a clean sheet.

It was in the Bundesliga (17.97%) and the Jupiler Pro League (17.08%) that you were most likely to see such results, with the usual suspects of Bayern Munich (7), Bayer Leverkusen (6) and Club Brugge (6) being joined by surprise packages in the shape of Hoffenheim (6) and Sint-Truiden (6):

During the 2025/26 campaign, 34.48% of games across these ten European leagues ended in a home or away victory in which both teams found the net.

Somewhat incredibly, PSV Eindhoven won 20 matches when conceding, whilst Bayern Munich weighed in with 16 such victories, so it comes as no surprise to see the German and Dutch leagues at the top of the standings when it comes to the percentage of contests of this type:

If you are looking for football tips today, then I would suggest that you could do a lot worse than backing PSV Eindhoven in the btts and win market in each of their Eredivisie games. In fact, since the beginning of last season, this approach would have proven successful 25 times out of 41.

SUMMARY

When it comes to both teams to score and win tips, the evidence from the 2025/26 campaign suggests that you should target the stronger sides in Germany’s Bundesliga and the Netherlands’ Eredivisie.

By way of contrast, Portugal’s Primeira Liga and Italy’s Serie A should be the focus of your attention when it comes to win to nil betting, with the bigger clubs in both competitions leaning heavily in this direction.