Football
Anirudh Menon 3y

Stats: Arsenal's first in 118, Man United's record 27, Mourinho fastest to 50 again

Goals, drama, plenty of action -- it was a superb weekend in football. In the Premier League, Liverpool, Chelsea, Brighton, Tottenham Hotspur all won to maintain their (early as it is) perfect start to the season. Manchester United were held at Southampton, while Manchester City swatted aside Norwich City.

In LaLiga, Barcelona and Real Madrid were held away from home by Athletic Bilbao and Levante, respectively. One club in the division has won two in two this season -- defending champions Atletico Madrid. The only team in the Bundesliga to have won both their matches is Wolfsburg. This weekend, though, Bayern Munich and RB Leipzig both won to get their campaigns going, while Borussia Dortmund lost. In Italy, Jose Mourinho and his AS Roma outfit started in fine style, Max Allegri and Juventus not so much.

By The Numbers brings you the best stats from the past two days:


Premier League

0

Arsenal have been playing in England's top four tiers for 118 years. This is the first time ever that they have opened a league season with two defeats and no goals after two matches. In fact, Arsenal have ended a day in the relegation zone with more than one game of the season played for the first time since August 1992.

9 years, 360 days

Romelu Lukaku finally scored his first goal for Chelsea -- it was his 16th appearance for the club, a whopping nine years and 360 days after initially making his debut for them in August 2011.

27

Manchester United have equalled a record set by the great Arsenal invincibles side. Their draw at Southampton meant they have now gone unbeaten in their last 27 away PL games (W17, D10), equalling the longest away unbeaten streak in English top-flight history, set by Arsenal between April 2003 and September 2004.

47%

Since Pep Guardiola joined Manchester City, there have been 49 PL games won by a margin of 5+ goals. His side are responsible for 23 (47%) of these.

48

Virgil van Dijk has not lost in any of his 48 PL appearances for Liverpool at Anfield (W43, D5). Only one player has played more home games for one club in the competition without losing - Lee Sharpe (59 with Manchester United).

114

Lukaku's opener at the Emirates was his 114th PL goal. That means he has now overtaken Ian Wright to become the 20th-highest scoring player in the PL era.

LaLiga

18 years, 80 days

Yusuf Demir (aged 18 years, 80 days) became the youngest non-Spanish player to make their LaLiga debut for Barcelona when he came on against Athletic since... a certain Argentine named Lionel Messi in October 2004 (17 years, 114 days).

Serie A

10

Lorenzo Insigne is now one of the only three Napoli players to have scored in at least 10 different Serie A campaigns -- after Antonio Juliano and Marek Hamsik (both 11).

50

With a 3-1 debut win with AS Roma (against Fiorentina), Jose Mourinho has become the fastest manager to reach 50 Serie A wins (77 games) in the three-points-per-win era (since 1994-95). Mourinho is also the fastest manager to have reached 50 wins in both the PL (63 games) and in LaLiga (62). There's something, er, special about him, eh?

7369

In Serie B, Gianluigi Buffon played an official match for Parma after 7369 days. His last match for them was on June 17, 2001 (vs Roma in Serie A). It was so long ago that Botond Balogh -- a teammate of his who started with him on Sunday -- had not yet been born.

Ligue 1

4

How's this for an unusual stat? The goal that Kylian Mbappe scored against Brest was just his fourth headed goal in Ligue 1 and first since March 2017 (with AS Monaco). He's scored 108 goals in total in Ligue 1 (92 for PSG, 16 for Monaco).

Messi-Ronaldo watch

Cristiano Ronaldo came on as a sub, thundered a header into the net, celebrated, and saw it ruled out by VAR for offside by the tiniest of margins. Not a happy start to 2021-22.

Lionel Messi, meanwhile, is yet to start his season. With PSG. Yeah, that's going to take some getting used to.

(Stats courtesy ESPN's Stats & Information Group)

^ Back to Top ^