David Moyes once commented that “…if you concede first in the Premier League, it [winning] becomes difficult” following a 2-0 defeat to West Brom. This quote got me thinking along similar lines, so I decided to make further use of the MCFC Analytics data to look at team success when scoring, or conceding, the first goal.
The obvious starting point then is looking at the Premier League as a whole, and how often the team scoring first wins, loses or draws.
As we can see, 67.6% is quite an overwhelming percentage for this specific result and would be fair to say that scoring the first goal in the Premier League is a great indicator of how the match will turn out. Of course, this does depend on the scoring team keeping concentration throughout the match once that crucial goal has been scored!
Moving on, I broke this statistic down, looking at each team separately to see firstly; how often each team scored the first goal and secondly; how many times that team converted the first goal into a win.
To simplify this into numbers then, the graph shows Man Utd scored the first goal 30 times over the season and converted a massive 90% of those into wins. Man City weren’t far behind scoring the first goal 28 times and converting 89% of those into wins. On the other hand, both Bolton and Wolves scored a measly 10 first goals over the season, with wolves only converting 20% of those into wins. Fair to say, it is unsurprising either team were relegated.
To finish off the first goal concept, I looked at how many times each team conceded the first goal. As important as scoring the first is, my personal opinion is that conceding first has a much more dramatic effect on team morale. Fair to say my prediction for this particular statistic was that the teams that regularly concede first were those in the lower half of the table.
As predicted, the graph shows us that Blackburn, Bolton and Wolves conceded the first goal most out of any team in the league last season. Considering all three got relegated, I do think this indicates the importance of scoring/conceding that first goal.
To sum it all up, some people often dismiss the importance of scoring first in football; often times saying that it can be a motivator to improve should you go one down first. In my opinion, the first goal is critical in the outcome of the match and teams should push hard to get on the right side of the score-line early, it may help you more than you think.
I genuinely would encourage you to go on MCFC Analytics and download the data yourself, have a play around and you never know what you might discover…