In the last game before the split Lee McCulloch had Rangers in front against Saints inside the first minute of a game that we went on to lose. This seemed to me the umpteenth time we've conceded a ridiculously early goal so I decided to see just how many goals we've lost in the opening stages of matches this season.
Below are my results (they may look a mess depending which browser you use), only goals we've conceded - or scored - in the opening quarter of an hour being looked at. I also studied what the final result of the game was after the early set back. The results are slightly skewed because we twice conceded two goals to Celtic in the opening 15 minutes!
| Season | Scored | Final Result | Conceded | Final Result | ||||||||
| 0-5 mins |
5-10 mins |
10-15 mins |
Win |
Draw |
Defeat |
0-5 mins | 5-10 mins |
10-15 mins |
Win | Draw | Defeat | |
| 2011/12 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 7 |
So it looks like we've shipped 12 early goals this season. Only twice have we overcome that hurdle to take a win - one ironically coming against Rangers. More often than not it ends in defeat. In contrast we've managed just five early goals ourselves but have at least managed to make that advantage count to register a few wins.
Twelve early goals sounds like a lot but with nothing to compare it against I couldn't tell if it was more or less than normal. So, because I had some spare time while watching the football on Sky, I decided to look at the early goals we've scored and conceded in each of our previous five SPL campaigns. Again the results are skewed slightly by our canny knack of shipping more than one early goal (managing it twice against Hibs in 2008 perhaps being the pick of our slow starts!).
| Season | Scored | Final Result | Conceded | Final Result | ||||||||
| 0-5 mins |
5-10 mins |
10-15 mins |
Win |
Draw |
Defeat |
0-5 mins | 5-10 mins |
10-15 mins |
Win | Draw | Defeat | |
| 2006/07 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| 2007/08 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 7 |
| 2008/09 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
| 2009/10 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| 2010/11 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
The highest before this season was nine in 2007/08 - thanks partly to conceding two goals in the opening 15 minutes against both Hibs and Falkirk. And remember, that tally was reached across a full season - we've conceded three more early goals than that this year and still have five games to go! An early goal pretty much always consigns us to a defeat too. Between 2006 and the end of last season we managed to salvage something on just five occasions. We've already managed it three times this year, but then we have had plenty of practice. Annoyingly our ability to score early goals isn't as good as it is at giving them away - and the results after scoring early remain equally varied down the years.
So what's causing this problem? The late goal issue was often because we were sitting deeper and deeper as the game progressed and were clinging on as the other team launched wave after wave of attack, eventually breaking through. But losing early? Are we just not switched on and paying attention or are we just making silly mistakes and it's luck they are happening so near the start of a game.
Would you rather concede an early or a late goal? Personally I'd go for early. If you concede in stoppage time then that's that, your day is done and there's very little you can do about it. If you concede early it's still a set back but you still have the majority of the game to put things right and snatch a point or three.
Of course, the best answer to that question would be not to concede any goals...
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