Feature

Stats: How successful are we on the opening day?

Arsenal celebrate against Crystal Palace in 2022

The first day of the league season is one that gets every Gooner’s blood pumping, as the anticipation and excitement ahead of a new campaign build to a crescendo, ending on the sounds of the referee’s whistle to get the opening game, and the 2024/25 season underway.

But how have we traditionally fared in our first fixture? We’ve leafed through the record books to uncover some facts and stats:

  • This will be our 121st league season, and in the previous 120 opening games, we have a record of 56 wins, 23 draws and 41 losses. We have never won the league after losing the opening game of the season.
     
  • We have won our opening Premier League match in each of the last two seasons, beating Crystal Palace in 2022/23 and Nottingham Forest last season. We last started our season with a win in three seasons in a row between 2007/08 and 2009/10.

  • After we netted twice against Nottingham Forest 12 months ago, we are four goals shy of netting 200 in total in game number one, having conceded 169 across the same period.
     
  • We have started a season at home much more often than not, with 68 home fixtures as opposed to 52 away.
     
  • This will be the 33rd Premier League season, and as we are ever-presents in the division we have played 32 times on the competition’s opening weekend, winning 18 and drawing six of those games. We average 1.88 points (using three points for a win) since the division’s creation in 1992, higher than our all-time average of 1.58.

Arsenal celebrate scoring against Newcastle United in 2019
  • Our game against Wolves on the opening day will be the 12th time in the last 13 seasons that we have begun our Premier League campaign with a game in London, with the exception being a 1-0 win at Newcastle United in 2019/20.
     
  • We haven’t drawn on the opening day in 12 years since we played out a goalless draw with Sunderland at Emirates Stadium.
     
  • Statistically, a draw on the opening day has seen us go on to enjoy good campaigns. In the six seasons we began with a stalemate, we have recorded an average finishing position of 3.5 in the table, ahead of the 3.9 when we won, and 4.6 when we lost.

  • We have scored 56 goals on the opening day of a Premier League season, including six in August 2009 when we thrashed Everton 6-1 at Goodison Park to record the biggest opening day win of our history. The Toffees are the team we’ve faced most often on the opening day in the Premier League, which has happened three times, and we won all three.
     
  • Our top scorer in Premier League openers is Dennis Bergkamp, who has five strikes to his name. Theirry Henry is second, with all four of his efforts being our first goal of the campaign in four out of five seasons between 2001/02 and 2005/06.

Arsenal's top PL opening day scorers
Dennis Bergkamp 5
Thierry Henry 4
Robert Pires 3
Ian Wright 3
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang 2
Kevin Campbell 2
Cesc Fabregas 2
Olivier Giroud 2
Alexandre Lacazette 2
Aaron Ramsey 2
Robin van Persie 2
  • No player has scored a hat-trick for us on the opening day in the Premier League, with Bergkamp and Cesc Fabregas the only ones to have netted twice. The Dutchman’s came in a 4-0 win over Middlesbrough in 2001, while Fabregas recorded his brace in that 2009 win at Everton.
     
  • Alexandre Lacazette’s two strikes were both the opening goals of the entire Premier League season - he is the only player in history to have achieved that feat.

Steve Bould scores against Norwich City in 1992
  • Steve Bould scored our first-ever Premier League goal, which came in the 28th minute of a 4-2 defeat to Norwich City back in August 1992. The centre-back headed in a Nigel Winterburn free-kick, before Kevin Campbell added a second before the Canaries staged a second-half comeback.
     
  • We have won each of our last six Premier League matches against Wolves, our joint-longest winning run against them in the competition.
     
  • Wolves have won just one of their last 13 away top-flight visits to us (D4 L8), winning 2-1 at the Emirates in November 2020 under Nuno Espírito Santo.
     
  • Wolves have lost their opening Premier League game in each of the last three seasons. They have never started a league season with defeat in four seasons in a row in their history.