Lead-taking goals

SoccerSTATS.com - updated on: 12 Jun 2020

Objective

The Lead-Taking Goals table shows for each team:

• the number of goals that allowed the team to take the lead
• the number of equalizers conceded
• a comparison between lead-taking goals scored and equalizers conceded

The table allows to see which teams have taken the lead the most and from those situations, how many times their opponents have managed to equalize.

Description

The table lists for each team:

• Games played
• Total lead-taking goals
• Lead-taking goals per game
• Total equalizer goals conceded
• Equalizer goals conceded per lead-taking goal

Below is a view of some of the columns of the Lead-Taking Goals table:

Calculations

For each team, the number of lead-taking goals scored is calculated by only taking into account those goals that allowed the team to set the score from a level status to a leading situation (for example, a goal scored when the score was 0-0 or 1-1).

The number of equalizer goals conceded per lead-taking goal is displayed both as an average and as a percentage for each team. That percentage gives an indication as to how often the team has conceded an equalizer, out of all the situations where the team was in the lead. The smaller the percentage, the most successful those teams have been at defending their leads.

The number of lead-taking goals scored can be higher than the number of matches played, as a team can take the lead more than once during the same match, and can also concede more than one equalizer in the same match.

Example

You can view an example on the Lead-taking goals page for the Bundesliga.

Avoiding pitfalls

Lead-taking goals include both opening goals and goals scored following an earlier equalizer. Some teams may have a high number of lead-taking goals because they have often scored the first goal. Other teams may score more lead-taking goals because they have a tendancy to both score and concede more goals than other teams.

That is why it is interesting to also look at the number of equalizers conceded, as a team that has been successful at defending their leads, thus conceding very few equalizers, would have had fewer opportunities to score more than one lead-taking goal per match.

Related statistics

The Lead-Taking goals table shows how often each team has taken the lead and how successful the team has been at defending those leads. Similarly, you may want to look at how successful the team has been at scoring equalizer goals themselves, out of the number of times that there opponents have taken the lead: the statistics on goals giving the lead to opponents and equalizer goals scored are summarized on the Equalizers scored description page.