How Common Are Own Goals & Who Scores Them?

It’s every player’s nightmare isn’t it, whether you’re playing top flight professional football or just having a knockabout down the park with your mates.

An attacker is steaming forward with the ball, he lines up a shot, wellies it towards the goal, you just manage to get a toe on the end of it to try and knock it wide and… top corner. The keeper was on top of it but your ‘heroic’ effort ended up sending them the wrong way.

Often times no one is really to blame, but there have been some absolute corkers over the decades where responsibility lay unquestionably on a single player’s shoulders.

What Is An Own Goal

It barely needs explaining, but an own goal is when any player on the field accidentally puts the ball in the back of their own net, effectively scoring against themselves and helping the other team.

It doesn’t matter how this comes about either. If the last person to touch the ball before it crosses the line is a player from the defending side, then that is an own goal.

Sometimes it’s a simple deflection, sometimes it’s a fumbled pass back to the keeper, and sometimes it’s a howler of a mis-kick or failed attempt to put the ball behind – they all count. As to who is credited with the goal, well it depends on the circumstances and who you ask.

The referee usually has the final say on who is credited with the goal, but some sources credit goals to their own rules based on if the interjection was deliberate, if the shot was on target or not, etc.

It’s arguably the most embarrassing thing that can happen to a footballer, so much so that the term is now used to explain slip ups in all walks of life, not just the beautiful game. For example, a politician trying to score points by slandering an opponent’s speech defect, only to cause upset countrywide for being insensitive, could be said to have “scored an own goal with that remark”.

Own Goal Stats: Regularity and Most Guilty

You might think own goals would be a rare occurrence in professional football, and to some degree you would be right.

When you look at the number of total goals scored in a premier league season and compare that to the number of own goals, that number is small.

Let’s have a look at how many own goals have gone in over a five season stretch and what percentage of games that makes, bearing in mind the Premier League contains 380 games in a season:

That’s pretty consistent from season to season and an average of 8.92%. So that shakily represents the likelihood of an own goal being scored in any given Premier League match.

You might assume that defensive players are most likely to score own goals, and quite right you would be, but have a look at the following stats taken from the same seasons as above and you might be surprised by how many of those goals were scored by forwards and midfielders:

Obviously, these stats will vary if you look at different leagues or a different group of seasons, but it’s enlightening information nonetheless.

Defenders were responsible for 71.6% of all own goals over the sample seasons we looked at. Taking own goals scored by goalkeepers out of the equation, that leaves 25.4% of all own goals scored by midfielders and forwards – over a quarter.

Less Serious Stats

For a bit of fun at someone else’s expense, here are a few more stats and figures for you to use as ammo next time you’re having a footy argument with your mates.

You hereby have our permission to quote these with confidence and claim that you found them out all by yourself.

Just spare a thought for the poor guys who have to live with the knowledge that they hold these unwanted records.

Most Own Goals In One Season

I bet Lewis Dunk’s house was fun at Christmas time 2017…

Most Own Goals in Premier League History

Dynamite stats to use when your annoying Liverpool supporting mate starts piping up.

And finally:

Team With Most Own Goals in Premier League History

As a Northerner it pains me to say it, but with only one Southern team in the top 5 those of us North of Birmingham should hang our heads.

Do Own Goals Affect Betting?

Own goals can have absolutely no effect on your bet or they can really mess things up for you, it all depends on what sort of bet you have placed.

It’s worth checking with your bookmaker before you make a bet, because some of them might differ slightly, but in general the following applies:

• Goalscorer Markets Pre-Match – Bets on first goalscorer, last goalscorer, scorecasts etc., will not count towards the bet. So if you have a first goalscorer bet on Harry Kane but a defender ends up scoring an own goal, your bet will not have lost until the first true goal is scored.
• Correct Score/Result, BTTS – Conversely, own goals do count on other markets like correct score. If you bet on a 2-0 result and an own goal contributes to that result, your bet will still win.
• In-Play Bets – Betting live opens the door to new betting lines like next player to score, next team to score, etc. In these situations an own goal would count. That means that if you bet on England to score next against France, and a French defender accidentally puts one away, your bet wins. You can even bet on own goals specifically at some bookies.

There are some other more niche markets that may be affected, but it’s best to go by what is above as a general rule, and check specifics with the bookmaker in question if you have doubts.

Funny & Famous Own Goals

Some of the following examples were really funny at the time (unless you were a supporter of the team in question of course), but one has much darker undertones.

All of them have gone down in football history for one reason or another, and if you ever get the chance to watch playbacks of them we recommend it – especially if you need cheering up.

There are so many more out there, but here is a list of 5 that we think are most noteworthy for various different reasons.