The 2025-2026 Premier League season kicked off in style. While there is plenty more football to play, we saw some strong performances by newly promoted teams Leeds and Sunderland, Man City are back to their normal ways with a 4-0 thrashing of Wolves, and Thomas Frank guided his new club Tottenham to their first Premier League win in 8 games (last 7 games of 24-25 season they had no wins).

In this article, we’re going to focus on 3 key facts from the opening weekend that stood out to us. We’ll dive right into it!

Opening Weekend Goals and Records

First up, we’ll talk about goals.

Chris Wood: Oldest Goalscorer

On opening weekend, Chris Wood was the oldest player to score a goal. In fact, he scored twice.

At the time of writing this article, Chris Wood is 33 years and 255 days old. His brace helped Nottingham Forrest beat Brentford 3-1 on the opening day of the season.

Eilezer Mayenda: Youngest Goalscorer

At the other end of the spectrum is Sunderland’s Eilezer Mayenda who opened the scoring with a 61^st minute goal in their match against West Ham United.

At the time of writing this article, Mayenda is 20 years and 103 days old and was the youngest scorer in the Premier League on the 25-26 opening weekend.

Haaland and Salah’s Opening Day Consistency

One thing that caught our eye was Haaland, he always seems to hit the ground running at the start of the season and score on the opening weekend. We took a look at the data and his opening weekend goal tally is impressive.

Since joining City in 2022, Erling Haaland has scored in the opening match of all four seasons. In total he has scored 7 goals in the first match and in three of the four occasions, he’s scored 2 goals per match – impressive!

However, we were even more impressed when we looked into Mohamed Salah’s statistics since joining Liverpool in 2017 from Roma. In the 9 seasons Salah has been with Liverpool, he has scored in the opening match in all seasons but one.

The consistency year over year is remarkable and it appears almost inevitable that Salah will score in the first match of the season.

Opening Weekend Total Goals vs. Previous Season

The last thing we’ll say about goals is 24. That’s the number of goals scored in the opening weekend of the 25-26 Premier League season.

There were 11 teams who scored on the opening weekend, with 9 teams remaining to get off the mark this season.

There were 24 goals scored across all matches in the 25-26 opening weekend of the English Premier League

Compared to last year, there were only 21 goals on opening weekend. However, there were more squads who scored in the opening game (14 teams scored in the opening match of 24-25, 6 squads didn’t get off the mark).

 It will be interesting to see how many total goals will be scored this season. On a per match week breakdown, we’re already 3 goals more. In the 24-25, there were a total of 1,115 goals scored (this includes own goals). Let’s see where we end up in May.

Promoted Teams Off to a Strong Start

Next up, we want to focus on the three newly promoted teams.

Leeds and Sunderland Wins

In first weekend of the 25-26 season, two of the promoted teams won their games. Leeds United beat Everton 1-0 and Sunderland beat West Ham 3-0.

The other promoted team was Burnley and they lost to Tottenham 3-0. So in total, the three promoted teams scored 6-points on the opening weekend. When comparing that to last season, the three promoted teams didn’t win a single game in the first match of the season.

Comparison with Last Season’s Promoted Teams

In the 24-25 opening weekend, Ipswich lost 2-0 to Liverpool, Southampton lost 1-0 to Newcastle, and Leicester tied Tottenham 1-1. In total there was 1-point earned for the promoted teams on match week 1.

As you’ll remember, Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton were all relegated at the end of the 24-25 Premier League season. In total, they had a combined 62 points over the season (38-games played each).

The 6-points already earned this season by the newly promoted team is 9.7% of the total points earned last year by the three promoted teams.

However, after only one match played, in percentage terms that is about 2.6% of their matches played. So far, the newly promoted teams this season are far out performing the newly promoted teams of last season.

Newly promoted teams have already earned 9.7% of total points earned by last season’s promoted teams, after only playing 2.6% of matches.

While we recognize it is early days and only one match has been played, the signs are encouraging. As noted in a previous article, in the last two seasons, the three promoted teams have been relegated back to the Championship at the end of the season.

5-year Average Performance of Promoted Teams on Match Day 1

Additionally, the average points earned over the last 5-years by the three newly promoted teams in the first match of the season is 2.2.

As the three promoted teams this season earned 6-points on opening weekend, they are well above the 5-year average.

The strong start of Leeds and Sunderland provides hope that maybe they will be challenging to stay up in the Premier League this season. This, of course, would make the league more entertaining and prove that promoted teams can be competitive in England’s top division.

Late Drama After the 75th Minute

Lastly, we’re going to look at the points won or lost after the 75^th minute in opening weekend.

While some times it’s nice for your football club to have the three points wrapped up early on in a match, often games with late drama are the ones that are remembered and talked about the most.

Liverpool, Sunderland, Leeds, and Fulham Late Goals

The 75^th minute of a football match marks the final third of the second half and from then until the end of the game is often when a lot of the goals are scored.

The late drama could be for a number of reasons, fresh legs from substitutes, tired legs from those who have played the whole match, or the continued relentlessness of one team to score late and save a point or steal all three.

In the 25-26 opening weekend of the Premier League, there were four of the ten matches that were decided around the 75^th minute or later.

Firstly, Liverpool won 4-2 against Bournemouth but it was late goals in the 88^th (Chiesa) and the 90+4^th (Salah) minute that earned them all three points.

Secondly is Sunderland, while they scored their first goal in the 61^st minute (Mayenda), it was goals scored in the 73^rd (Ballard) and 90+2^nd (Isidor) minutes that sealed the victory.

Leeds United put up a strong performance against Everton and won 1-0. It was an 84^th minute penalty by Nmecha that put them ahead and they were able to hold onto the lead until the final whistle.

The 75^th minute of a football match marks the final third of the second half and from then until the end of the game is often when a lot of the goals are scored.

Lastly is Fulham, they were playing 1-0 down against Brighton since the 55^th minute. However, Muniz scored late in stoppage time at the 90+6^th minute to save a point for Fulham.

In the remaining six matches, two were 0-0 draws and the other four were decided before the 75^th minute.

But that late drama is what makes the Premier League so exciting and what keeps fans on the edges of their seats. It was fascinating to see the 25-26 Premier League season start again with so much late excitement.

Final Thoughts and Fan Predictions

Well, that’s it for this article. In this post, we took a look at the opening weekend of the 2025-2026 Premier League season and some key highlights. Firstly, were the goal statistics, of which Haaland and Salah take the headlines for the consistency with scoring in match week 1.

Secondly, we discussed the strength of the newly promoted teams in the opening weekend. In particular, Leeds and Sunderland, who each picked up 3-points in match week 1.

As noted in the article, while it is early days, the promoted teams have a buzz about them and we’re optimistic that we’ll see at least a couple of them remain in the Premier League at the end of the season.

Lastly, we touched briefly on the late drama of the Premier League opening weekend and the number of matches that were decided after the 75^th minute. The late goals that change the outcome of the match make it that more exciting or that more heartbreaking for fans, depending on which side you’re on.

What were your thoughts on the match week 1 of this 2025-2026 Premier League season? Any players or teams that stood out to you? Any predictions for top scorer or which teams will be relegated this year? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

Stay tuned for future posts and please send us a message if there is a specific topic you would like to see covered. We’ll be able to dig a bit deeper into the data as the season progresses and we can start to see trends emerging. Additionally, if you have some ideas on how we can improve these articles, please send them our way too.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read these posts!

JC

All data in this article is from fbref.com so, thanks to them!