It is a common thing in football for someone to declare that the first goal in a match is ‘crucial’. Sometimes it will be because of the fragile confidence of one of the teams playing, meaning that a goal against them could see them crumble and concede a shed-load more. Other times, it will be because the match is likely to be a tight one between two sides that are good enough to cancel each other out, with the first goal possibly ending up either being the winner or else causing the conceding side to come out more, opening the game up.
Regardless of the reason, football fans will often fear the first goal and what it means for the possible result. The question is, is this fear justified? Is it actually the case that the first goal ends up being the most important, or are there more than a few occasions when actually the first goal doesn’t have a huge say on the outcome of the match? Another thing that is worth considering is whether the first goal matters more in some divisions than in others. Are Premier League teams better at comebacks than those further down the league system?
How Important is the First Goal?
In the five seasons between 2016-17 and 2020-21, the team that scored first in the Premier League went on to win in 65.3% of all matches (including goalless draws). In the Championship during this same period, the team scoring first went on to win in 63.6% of matches.
When excluding goalless draws in the Premier League, the home team won 75.1% of matches when they score first, the away team won 64.2% of the matches that they scored first in. In the Championship when excluding goalless draws, the home team won 72.4% of the matches that they scored first in with the away team winning 64.1% of matches that they scored first in.
Looking At The Premier League
Where else to start but by looking at the top-flight of English football, the Premier League. With a revolving door of 20 league teams to look at, constantly replacing some with others, it gives us a solid basis by which to explore the data about opening goals. Given the fact that the Premier League is worth so much money, it goes without saying that virtually every match played is of huge importance. Does that sort of pressure mean that goals being scored or conceded makes a big difference to the teams involved?
We’ll look across five seasons and explore how often the team that scored the first goal went on to win the match, how common it was for the opening goal scoring side to draw the game and how many times a team opened the scoring and yet still went on to lose when the full-time whistle was blown. For the sake of completeness, we’ll also look at the number of times in a season there was no goal scored in any of the 380 matches played during the campaign.
Match Outcome of Team Scoring First (Premier League)
| Season | Won | Drew | Lost | No Goals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-2021 | 241 (63.42%) | 53 (13.95%) | 56 (14.74%) | 30 (7.89%) |
| 2019-2020 | 243 (63.95%) | 71 (18.68%) | 45 (11.84%) | 21 (5.53%) |
| 2018-2019 | 267 (70.26) | 49 (12.89%) | 42 (11.05%) | 22 (5.79%) |
| 2017-2018 | 238 (62.63%) | 67 (17.63%) | 43 (11.32%) | 32 (8.42%) |
| 2016-2017 | 252 (66.32%) | 57 (15.00%) | 44 (11.58%) | 27 (7.11%) |
| Total | 1,241 (65.32%) | 297 (15.63%) | 230 (12.11%) | 132 (6.95%) |
The interesting thing to note here is that the team that scores the first goal is more likely to draw the match than to lose it, showing why getting on the scoresheet first is so important. It’s also worth noting that the first team to score went on to win the match more than 65% of the time across the five campaigns in question. Generally speaking, therefore, scoring the first goal very much matters.
Does Home Or Away Matter in the Premier League?
Knowing the breakdown of results is one thing, but getting more information about how things work out for the home team or the away side if they’re the ones score first tells us something else. Here we’ll look at what the result tends to be if it was the home team that scored first, across those same five seasons:
Match Outcome When the Home Teams Score First
| Season | Home Win | Draw | Away Win |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-2021 | 120 (65.93%) | 30 (16.48%) | 32 (17.58%) |
| 2019-2020 | 140 (74.87%) | 34 (18.18%) | 13 (6.95%) |
| 2018-2019 | 156 (80.00%) | 22 (11.28%) | 17 (8.72%) |
| 2017-2018 | 149 (75.63%) | 29 (14.72%) | 19 (9.64%) |
| 2016-2017 | 162 (78.26%) | 26 (12.56%) | 19 (9.18%) |
| Total | 727 (75.10%) | 141 (14.57%) | 100 (10.33%) |
For the home side, the opening goal means that there is around a 90% chance that you’ll walk away with at least a point, if the five seasons in question are representative of a longer period of time. It is interesting to see that the only season in which the home team didn’t go on to win the match after opening the scoring was 2020-2021, when the majority of matches were played behind-closed-doors. The argument that football without fans is nothing certainly holds some water.
Having looked at what happens when the home team is the one that opens the scoring, it’s now worth having a look to see if things differ when it is the away team that gets the first goal in a match. Here is the information from those same five campaigns that we’ve been looking at so far:
Match Outcome When the Away Teams Score First
| Season | Away Win | Draw | Home Win |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-2021 | 121 (72.02%) | 23 (13.69%) | 24 (14.29%) |
| 2019-2020 | 103 (59.88%) | 37 (21.51%) | 32 (18.60%) |
| 2018-2019 | 111 (68.10%) | 27 (16.56%) | 25 (15.34%) |
| 2017-2018 | 89 (58.94%) | 38 (25.17%) | 24 (15.89%) |
| 2016-2017 | 90 (61.64%) | 31 (21.23%) | 25 (17.12%) |
| Total | 514 (64.25%) | 156 (19.50%) | 130 (16.25%) |
The first thing that pops up is that, much with away sides doing better when the home team scored first in the 2020-2021 season, the same is true if the away team got on the scoresheet first that season. Across the board, the away side is about 10% less likely to win the match when scoring first than the home team, so getting the opener doesn’t necessarily mean that an away side is likely to get the three points.
Looking At The Championship
England’s second division is obviously less full of quality team than the top-flight, which is no surprise. The question is, does the first goal in a game matter more or less than it does in the Premier League? We’ve looked at the same five seasons to see what happened, including looking at when no goals were scored in a game:
Match Outcome of Team Scoring First (Championship)
| Season | Won | Drew | Lost | No Goals |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-2021 | 354 (64.13%) | 86 (15.58%) | 59 (10.69%) | 53 (9.60%) |
| 2019-2020 | 343 (62.14%) | 117 (21.20%) | 60 (10.87%) | 32 (5.80%) |
| 2018-2019 | 329 (59.71%) | 123 (22.32%) | 60 (10.89%) | 39 (7.08%) |
| 2017-2018 | 358 (64.86%) | 99 (17.93%) | 46 (8.33%) | 49 (8.88%) |
| 2016-2017 | 371 (67.21%) | 96 (17.39%) | 51 (9.24%) | 34 (6.16%) |
| Total | 1,755 (63.61%) | 521 (18.88%) | 276 (10.00%) | 207 (7.50%) |
As was suspected, Championship teams aren’t quite as able to hold on to the lead if they score first as Premier League teams can manage, though there’s only a couple of percent in it. Indeed, it’s only slightly more likely that the team that scores first will go on to lose as it is that no goal will be scored in the game at all. Scoring the first goal is important, but slightly less important than in the top-flight.
Does Home & Away Matter In The Championship?
Now that we’ve looked at the results overall, it’s worth once again exploring whether home advantage matters when it comes to the opening scorers. How often does the home team scoring lead to them going on to win? Here is a look at our chosen five seasons to find out:
Match Outcome When the Home Teams Score First
| Season | Home Win | Draw | Away Win |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-2021 | 200 (72.99%) | 42 (15.33%) | 32 (11.68%) |
| 2019-2020 | 194 (69.04%) | 63 (22.42%) | 24 (8.54%) |
| 2018-2019 | 208 (67.53%) | 72 (23.38%) | 28 (9.09%) |
| 2017-2018 | 210 (74.73%) | 53 (18.86%) | 18 (6.41%) |
| 2016-2017 | 230 (77.97%) | 46 (15.59%) | 19 (6.44%) |
| Total | 1,042 (72.41%) | 276 (19.18%) | 121 (8.41%) |
As with winning overall, the home side is less likely to win the match if they score first than Premier League teams. Again, it’s only be a couple of percent, but it’s still enough to suggest that the difference in quality is pretty big between sides in the top-flight and the second-tier division of English football.
What happens if it is the away side that scores first? Here is a look at the results from the same period of time, with the wins for the away side coming first:
Match Outcome When the Away Team Score First
| Season | Away Win | Draw | Home Win |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-2021 | 154 (68.44%) | 44 (19.56%) | 27 (12.00%) |
| 2019-2020 | 149 (62.34%) | 54 (22.59%) | 36 (15.06%) |
| 2018-2019 | 121 (59.31%) | 51 (25.00%) | 32 (15.69%) |
| 2017-2018 | 148 (66.67%) | 46 (20.72%) | 28 (12.61%) |
| 2016-2017 | 141 (63.23%) | 50 (22.42%) | 32 (14.35%) |
| Total | 713 (64.06%) | 245 (22.01%) | 155 (13.98%) |
The reality is that away teams are only one percent or so less likely to go on and win the match if they score first in the Championship than sides in the Premier League. When it comes to In-Play betting, therefore, the opening goal can very much influence the outcome of the game seemingly regardless of the level of football being played.
