Everton host Brighton & Hove Albion at their new Hill Dickinson Stadium on Sunday afternoon, which gives us a welcome opportunity to look at the list of players who scored the first Premier League goal at each stadium.
On Sunday afternoon, the Hill Dickinson Stadium will host Everton vs Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League, the Toffees’ first competitive game at their new home. They are the first Premier League club outside of London to move stadium since Manchester City in 2003.
It’ll be unfamiliar surroundings for players and fans alike, as ever since September 1892, Goodison Park had been their home. Now, they have moved to their new stadium at Bramley Moore Dock for 2025-26.
It’ll become the 62nd different stadium to host a Premier League match, and the first to play host to its first game in the competition since Luton Town’s Kenilworth Road in September 2023.
Just one of the 10 clubs to have played at two different permanent home grounds in the Premier League have lost their first such game at their new home (W5 D4), with Southampton going down 2-0 to Chelsea at St Mary’s in August 2001.
The Everton and Brighton players will be hoping to enter the record books as the first goalscorer in a league fixture at the Hill Dickinson Stadium, but of course, Sunday’s match could end goalless, and the honour would roll over to Everton’s next home game in the competition versus Aston Villa on 13 September.
The first match at four of the previous 61 stadiums to host a Premier League game ended goalless: The Dell in 1992, Roker Park in 1996, The Reebok Stadium (now known as the Toughsheet Community Stadium) in 1997 and Swansea City’s Liberty Stadium in 2011.
Only one Everton player has had the honour of scoring the first Premier League goal at a stadium – Peter Beardsley at Manchester United’s Old Trafford in August 1992. Nigel Pearson scored the first Premier League goal at their former stadium, Goodison Park, for Sheffield Wednesday, just four days before Beardsley’s strike in Manchester.
In the history of the Premier League, the first goal scored at just two stadiums were own goals.
Bradford City’s John Dreyer put the ball into his own net against Sheffield Wednesday in August 1999 to score the first goal in the competition at Valley Parade, while Jacob Laursen’s own goal in favour of Leeds United came in Derby County’s first Premier League encounter at the Baseball Ground in 1996.
You can find a full list of first goalscorers at the 61 stadiums to have hosted a Premier League game in our list here:
Premier League Stats Opta
Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You should also follow our social accounts over onX, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.******