Is there anything more satisfying as a football fan than when your team scores a late winning goal?
The joy is only offset by knowing that, at some point in the future, you are likely to be the one commiserating and tearing your hair out when your side concedes an injury-time goal.
An early goal can completely change the expected dynamic of a match too, and the old cliché that ‘goals change games’ is as true today as it has ever been.
There is plenty to be gleaned about a team based upon when they score – and concede – the bulk of their goals, and there can be other perks to such information too. Many bookmakers offer betting markets for first/last goalscorer and time brackets for goals to be scored, so something of an edge can be gained by knowing which teams thrive when.
Given that many betting sites utilise the latest online casino software to offer their clients slots, blackjack and roulette as well as wagering markets – and from a single website/app no less – there are plenty of reasons why you might be interested in knowing regular goal times for selected clubs.
Premier League
After eight rounds of the 2022/23 Premier League season, two of the most interesting nuggets to be gleaned from the goal time stats revolve around promoted teams.
Bournemouth has conceded six goals – and scored none – in the 30-45th minute window, suggesting that they run out of steam at the end of the first period. Nottingham Forest, meanwhile, is 0-6 in the 46-60th minute bracket, which suggests they come out for the second half either lacking in concentration or completely befuddled by their head coach’s instructions.
FULL-TIME Man City 4-2 Crystal Palace
Erling Haaland scores a second-half hat-trick as the champions recover from 2-0 down to take the three points#MCICRY pic.twitter.com/Teg5XB9QIy
— Premier League (@premierleague) August 27, 2022
As far as goalscoring is concerned, three teams lead the way with six goals netted in a specific window – Manchester City (61-75th), Tottenham (61-75th) and, surprisingly, Fulham (46-60th).
La Liga
The most productive time brackets in La Liga after seven weeks of the 2022-23 campaign belong to two of its most illustrious clubs. Real Madrid has scored five and conceded zero in the 61-75th minute window, while Villarreal has left things late and boast a 5-0 record in the period from the 76th minute to the final whistle.
Defensively, Elche (0-5) struggled in the 15 minutes up until half-time, while the supporters of Cadiz and Valladolid might question the conditioning of their players – they have shipped five and six goals respectively in the last 15 minutes (plus injury time) of their games.
Series A
Supporters of Lazio and Udinese have been in raptures quite often during the eight rounds of the 2022/23 season so far – their teams have scored their highest percentage of goals in the last 15 minutes of games.
Udinese go top of the Serie A table and beat Inter 3-1 with late goals from Jaka Bijol and Tolgay Arslan — since losing to Milan and drawing to Salernitana in his first two games as manager, Andrea Sottil has led Udinese to five wins in a row. pic.twitter.com/r74G97Ppy9
— Zach Lowy (@ZachLowy) September 18, 2022
But it’s been heartache for Torino fans, who have watched their team ship five late goals, while Monza’s faithful may want to get in the queue for their half-time refreshments early – they have conceded five of their fourteen goals in the 15 minutes in the lead-up to the interval.
Oh, and Juventus and Inter Milan fans had better not miss the start of their teams’ games – some 33% and 23% of their goals respectively have come in the opening quarter of the contest!
Hopefully, this information will prove useful to you in some way… if for no other reason than that you don’t give up on your team, or don’t catch your chickens too early, as games tick into their dying embers.
Photo by Unsplash