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Three times in 33 seasons, Liverpool have lost the first league game of a campaign. 20 times they have won it and 10 times they have drawn.
The Newcastle vs Liverpool odds at Paddy Power prices one afternoon, and one afternoon is exactly what a 33-season record comes down to. This one falls at 4.30pm on Sunday 23 August, the penultimate game of the opening round.
The three exceptions
The defeats date more than a decade, and they are not clustered.
| Season | Date | Venue | Opponent | Score |
| 2003-04 | 17 August 2003 | Home | Chelsea | 1-2 |
| 2009-10 | 16 August 2009 | Away | Tottenham | 1-2 |
| 2012-13 | 18 August 2012 | Away | West Brom | 0-3 |
The most recent of them was a 3-0 defeat away to West Brom on 18 August 2012. Since that afternoon Liverpool have opened 13 seasons and lost none of them: 10 wins and three draws. The run covers the title Arne Slot won in 2024-25 and the fifth-place finish that followed it. Whatever else the squad has been through in each August, it has rarely lost the first match.
Twenty away days, two defeats
20 of Liverpool’s 33 opening fixtures have been on the road. They have won 10, drawn eight and lost two. Both defeats are in the table above, and the second of them is now 14 years old.
An away opener is usually the harder draw. A home crowd is at its loudest in August, the visiting side has had no competitive football to settle into, and everybody is guessing. Liverpool’s record says they handle that particular version of the away trip better than most.
Andoni Iraola takes it on having replaced Slot in June and he is already looking past pre-season. “This fixture, plus the games we have scheduled next week against Como, will be hugely beneficial for us as we start to look ahead to our first Premier League game, up at Newcastle, in a few weeks’ time.”
Related: Arteta Hints At More Arsenal Signings
Newcastle come at it from the other end
Newcastle have played 31 opening fixtures across the same 33 seasons. They have won 11, drawn eight and lost 12, which is as close to a coin flip as a record gets.
18 of those 31 were at St James’ Park. At home on the opening day Newcastle have won eight, drawn three and lost seven. That is a better record than their overall one and still nothing like Liverpool’s.
The same archive turns up one more thing. Across 33 seasons, the fixture list has never once put these two together on the opening day. Sunday is the first time.
What the date carries this year
This opening day holds something beyond the football. Kevin Keegan died on 20 July at the age of 75. Three days later, the BBC reported that Newcastle and Liverpool were in discussions over a joint tribute before kick-off at St James’ Park. He won three league titles, the European Cup, two UEFA Cups and the FA Cup in six years at Liverpool, and later played for and managed Newcastle. Sunday is the first competitive meeting of these two clubs since his death.
What a 33-year run is worth
Not very much, on its own, and it is worth being straight about that. A record built across 33 different squads does not tell you who wins a football match. What it does is describe a habit, and habits are the only thing a first fixture offers, because form does not exist yet and neither does a table.
It is also worth separating the day from the season. An opening result and a title are different questions, and the Premier League betting odds at Paddy Power price the second one across all 20 clubs, which is where the market’s view of Liverpool actually sits. The same 13-season run contains a championship and a fifth-place finish, so it settles nothing about May.
If it holds, the number becomes 34 and nobody writes about it again until next August. If it does not, a run that has stood since 2013 ends on Tyneside, in the first opening fixture these two clubs have ever been given.
