In this post I am looking at how often a team Win , Lose or Draw when scoring or conceding the first goal. I also want to look further into the time of the first goal so offer an info-graphic to show the time of the first goal in 15 minute bands.

We can look at the limitations first which is that there have only been 11 games played by the majority of teams but I am looking for trends to form as the season progresses. It would obviously be a good idea to review a trend to see how well it has been maintained. Although Manchester United broke the 1-0 away trend at Half Time by beating Aston Villa it is historically a very strong trend.

It should also be noted that the Time band 31-45 includes added time in the first half and 76-90 includes added time in the second half.

The second table shows what the full time result is when the Premier League team scores first and the third table shows what the full time result is when the Premier League team concedes first.

If we look at the data we can see that Everton are the “Comeback” team . They have conceded first in their last 6 games and not lost any which has been well documented. Man United have won the most games when they have conceded first this season thus far with an impressive 5 wins. Now the key here is that will Everton revert to the mean and lose games when they concede first or is this a long running trend? The answer is that time will tell and if we revisit the updated tables in a few months we will certainly have more of an idea.

Scoring First Goal Result Stats

All tables can be sorted by clicking on the Column Headers.

[table id=98 /]

At this stage people who like to Bet on football may use the data to predict which team will score first or the probability of winning full time, but it is certainly not my position to suggest that. It is clear that Wigan do not have any “fight back” in them thus far when they concede as they have lost 6/6 thus far. Equally Reading and Southampton just cannot take advantage of scoring first as they are still to win full time when scoring first. Swansea and Man United have a 100% win record when scoring first this season thus far.

Conceding First Goal Result Stats

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[table id=99 /]

If we take this further we now need to look at the time of the first goal in the respective time bands and see if we can see any trends forming. I am going to break that down and look at the time of the first goal by the home team and the away team. Is there is correlation between the time of the first goal and the probability of winning full time? I appreciate that the limitation is that we have a small sample but it should not stop us from exploring this avenue early in the season.

We can see that only one HOME team has lost this season thus far when scoring the first goal in the 0-15 time range and that is Fulham who score on 10′ against Man City at home and lost 2-1 Full Time.

You can also see that just one HOME team has lost this season when scoring first in the 31-45 time band and that is Aston Villa who lost to Man United when 1-0 up at Half Time scoring on 45′. This I expected as you may be aware by now of the 1-0 HT blog which shows how difficult it is for the away team to win FT when losing 1-0 Half Time and Man United are the only team to achieve that this season thus far.

Looking at the 46-60 time band we see that there is a high % of Full Time wins and that is 76%. The key is to follow this trend and see if it continues. The only home team to lose this season when scoring the first goal in the 46-60 time band is Liverpool who scored on 46′ but were already down to 10 men and lost 2-1 at Home to Man United.

Looks like Manchester United and Manchester City are the “trend breakers”.

My conclusion is that it is of interest to look at the time of the first goal in terms of exploring the probability of a team winning the game Full Time. I do not offer a detailed Football predictive model but it is something that is certainly worth exploring for the rest of the season as Southampton, Wigan, Reading and QPR are not picking up points when conceding the first goal. Last season Blackburn and Wolves struggled to “fight back” when conceding first and they were relegated.

All tables can be sorted by clicking on the Column Headers.

First Goal scored by Minutes Result Stats

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