OPENER
And so we are underway for the 33rd Premier League season and Joshua Zirkzee became the first player whose name begins with a Z to score the opening goal of the season. As you are asking , the most common letter for the the very first goal of the season is C with Carl Cort, Kevin Campbell, Djibril Cisse, Michael Chopra and Sergi Canos. Only one player has done it twice and that is Arsenal’s Alexander Lacazette, who did so in 2017/18 and 2020/21.
After the goalfest that was last season, the opening ten matches did not go off at quite the same pace with just the 21 and only Brighton scoring more than twice. This was the fourth lowest number of goals scored in an opening weekend, apart from 2011/12 and 1998/99 when there were only 18 and 19 in 2005/06 from the ten matches. This does not augur well for the 2024/25 season but it’s early days.
Last season’s tally of 1,246 goals was by far the highest in Premier League history, with those goals coming at a rate of 3.28 per match. This total outdid the previous record by 22 goals and that record was set in the inaugural season of 1992/93 when there were 22 teams and 82 more matches.
The curiosity of MatchWeek 1 was that no player scored more than once and that is the first time that this has happened in the Premier League. In the very first match in August 1992 Brian Deane picked up a brace when Sheffield United beat Manchester United 2-1. Mark Robins, Alan Shearer and Lee Chapman also scored twice on the opening weekend. Overall there have been 75 times that players have marked the start of the season with at least two goals.
In 2001/02 there were six alone. Arsenal’s Denis Bergkamp, Kevin Nolan and Per Frandsen in the same Bolton victory over Leicester City, Michael Owen, and to complete the set Ruud van Nistelrooy and Louis Saha both scored in the Manchester United 3-2 victory over Fulham.
Alongside all those doubles, there have been ten hat-tricks on the opening weekend [this Guardian article from 2019 highlights the first seven – https://bit.ly/2ZNdUt1] which were then followed by trebles from Raheem Sterling, Mo Salah and Bruno Fernandes in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
‘It Started With a Kick’ Episode 20 – Nigel Adderley
Nigel is one of the main commentators for talkSPORT as well as being a lecturer at the University of Northants. His first match was in 1979 as he saw the mighty Liverpool take on Tranmere Rovers at Prenton Park. Amongst the many great stories he talks about the mural outside the ground that depicts club legends Ian Muir and Ray Mathias; how John King turned the club’s fortunes round on his return to the club; a 200-a-side match with Sunderland fans in a Wembley car park and also the Tranmere Media Mafia.
Part 1 – https://bit.ly/4cxMUlG
Part 2 – https://bit.ly/4cz1jyb
The Football Mine 