The Simple Weekend (Who scores first)

Good to see the full programme back this weekend and big start to Saturday with the Manchester derby which has had a serious upgrade this season and Pep v Ibra is a good matchup.

Got an email recently that said

I wonder if you have any stats on first goal scored in a game:

or

Anything thing relating to who scored the 1st goal ? AND HOW IT EFFECTS THE FINAL OUTCOME / RESULT

Not something we have looked at before and should have some data for this from the top leagues in Europe but this week we’ll just look at the Premier League.  First step is to see which team scores first in the Premier League.

SeasonMatchesHome 1st0-0Away 1st
2012-1338051%9%39%
2013-1438054%7%39%
2014-1538054%8%37%
2015-1638052%8%40%
Total152053%8%39%

As you can see the home team scores first in around half the matches and the away team in about 4/10 and a little less than 1/10 matches ends 0-0.

What happens when the home team scores first

SeasonMatchesHome WinDrawAway Win
2012-1319569%20%11%
2013-1420576%15%10%
2014-1520773%18%9%
2015-1619671%19%9%
Total80372%18%10%

When the home team scores first in the past 4 seasons they have on average won 72% of the matches. What is interesting is that they have only drawn 18% of those matches and then lost 10% which is quite high based on the draw figure.

What happens when the away team scores first

SeasonMatchesHome WinDrawAway Win
2012-1315021%23%57%
2013-1414816%14%70%
2014-1514215%18%68%
2015-1615211%24%64%
Total59216%20%65%

When the away team scores first the home team only comes back to win the game 16% of the time. 20% of the matches end in a draw and the home team goes on to win the game around 2/3 of the time.

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