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All teams like to start a game well. It’s pretty obvious that no coach will come up with a matchday plan with the idea of letting the opposition take the early lead before attempting to rally to secure the three points.
But how important is the first goal in football and how much does it really impact the result?
Well, curiously, it is usually a deciding factor. In fact, numerous soccer studies conclude that scoring the first goal of the game will lead to victory approximately 70 percent of the time. However, this can be affected by different factors, such as the quality of the equipment.
For example, so far this season Liverpool have lagged behind five times and have only lost one (W3, D1, L1). Burnley, on the other hand, has also conceded first five times, but his record is W0, D0, L5.
However, no matter how good your team is, the game becomes much easier to win or lose, depending on whether you score first or the opponent scores.
With that in mind, below is a summary of each Premier League team’s record in terms of opening goals scored or conceded.
Surprisingly, Manchester United have managed to score the opening goal in a Premier League match on just three occasions throughout the season. This is the same number of times as West Bromich Albion, in 19th place.
Obviously their ability to bounce back from early setbacks after going one goal behind is very positive and no team in the league has accumulated more points after conceding first than United’s total of 18 so far. This illustrates the character Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has instilled throughout the current United team.
However, we can see from the visualization above that there are many similarities between the previous rankings and the current positions of each team in the Premier League table, with United being the obvious outlier.
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So they’ll want to get on the bright side of this first scoring metric as the above indicates that United is likely to continue to get positive results from lost positions, if the trend continues.
Fortunately, we saw improvements in this regard at Old Trafford in United’s 6-2 demolition of rivals Leeds United last weekend. The Reds were up 2-0 after a quick double by Scott McTominay after three minutes, so they took strong control of the game before the visitors could find their feet.
Although the result was not yet sealed at that stage, hitting first put United in a commanding position and made the task of obtaining a result that much more difficult for Leeds. United also scored first at Everton in the Carabao Cup and won, although Cavani’s first game at Goodison Park was much closer to the final whistle than McTominay’s at the weekend!
Solskjaer will expect more of the same in the weeks and months to come.
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