Getting off to a good start
History suggests three points on opening day are key to title chances
The importance of hitting the ground running is one of the messages that is drilled into players at every level during preseason and it is no different in the Premier League. The evidence would suggest that they have a point. Since the Premier League began in the 1992-93 season, the vast majority of champions kicked off their titlewinning campaign with a win – 16 of the 24, or two-thirds of the winners have started off with victory.
That’s why Leicester City’s chance of retaining the title last season was as good as over at the final whistle of the first game. The Foxes lost 2-1 away at Hull – becoming the first reigning champions in Premier League history to lose on the opening day – and
effectively admitting defeat in the title race.
Playing catchup
This is not just because seven teams won – including Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and eventual champions Chelsea – so Claudio Ranieri’s side were always playing catchup, but because only one team and one manager have ever done the unthinkable – losing the opening game and going on to lift the Premier League trophy the following May. The man in question is Sir Alex Ferguson and his Manchester United side in fact did so on three occasions – the first of which was the very first Premier League season 25 years ago. United went into the campaign as runners-up having done what they did best at the time and blown the title race, this time losing out to bitter rivals Leeds United in the last-ever Football League First Division.
Making history
The opening game in question saw the first-ever goal in Premier League history, scored by Sheffield United’s Brian Deane after just five minutes and his second, a penalty on 50 minutes, was enough to see the home side over the line at Bramall Lane despite a Mark Hughes consolation. In the end it proved an irrelevance: Ferguson’s side won the league by 10 points, ahead of Norwich City, and ended their 26-year wait for the club to be champions of England.
The second time the Old Trafford side overcame a losing start was three seasons later. Ferguson had dismantled his side ahead of the 1995-96 campaign and sold star players Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis following a trophyless season. In their stead he had promoted then unknown youth players to the first team.
Household names
The lineup at Villa Park in the August sunshine contained Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes, with David Beckham coming off the bench at halftime. Beckham scored a late consolation but United went down 3-1 to their hosts, leading TV pundit and former Liverpool defender to announce that “you can’t win anything with kids.”
Those United youngsters won the league that season – as part of a double with the FA Cup – and went on to become household names. Hansen, meanwhile, took his earlyseason prediction on the chin as Ferguson’s side went to become even more dominant domestically.
Draw as bad as a loss
The third and final time that a team has won the league after losing their first foray was in Ferguson’s final season in the Old Trafford dugout. His side took on David Moyes’ Everton at Goodison Park and the game finished 1-0 to the hosts, thanks to a goal from Marouane Fellaini. The season would end with United crowned champions for a record 20th time and Ferguson walking away into the sunset having anointed the man who beat him on the opening day as his successor. Moyes would last only seven months in his new role while his first signing as Manchester United manager, Fellaini, is still at the club.
If losing is an almost surefire disaster, there is still a chance that the champions could come from a team that only manages to share the spoils in their first game – as long as their names are not Manchester City or Chelsea, that is. Both clubs have only won the league after winning their opening game – City twice and Chelsea three times – but the Premier League has gone to a team that only managed a draw out the blocks on six occasions.
Consigned to history?
As you might expect from an era that has been characterized by the dominance of Ferguson’s United side, that honor belonged to him on four occasions – in the aforementioned treble season of 1998-99, in 19992000 when they won the league title and Champions League in 2008-09 and in 200910, when they again reached the Champions League final.
Those title wins only came after the bar had been set. First came Kenny Dalglish at Blackburn Rovers, the winners of the 1994-95 Premier League. Rovers began the season with a 1-1 draw away to Southampton but clinched the title on the final day away at Anfield, pipping Manchester United to three in a row. The next side to start with a draw and become champions was Arsenal in 199798, when Arsene Wenger’s side bounced back from being held by Leeds United away at Elland Road to lift his first title.
As it stands, only three men – Dalglish, Wenger and Ferguson – have ever won the league without taking the maximum haul from their first fixture. Of the other managers who have won the Premier League that are still in the dugout, only Antonio Conte and Jose Mourinho have won the league at all – both did so at Chelsea. For those two managers, and the others who aspire to be champions after this season’s 38 Premier League games conclude in May next year, it seems they will need to hit the ground running.