The New Wembley – Club Football Facts and Figures

This year’s Community Shield was the 44th competitive club match since the re-opening* and fittingly it featured the two clubs that have made the new stadium their second home: Chelsea (with a record 9 appearances) and Manchester United (with 8 appearances). In fact, Manchester United have played in all four of the Community Shield matches since the event moved to the new Wembley, winning three and losing one of them. In that period, the team that has won the Shield has always gone on to win the league, so Alex Ferguson will take great heart from his side’s 3-1 victory yesterday.

A grand total of 51 club teams have earned the honour of running out onto the new Wembley turf (which finally seems to be a decent playing surface) in the four and a bit years since the stadium opened. The most notable absentees from that list are Liverpool and Manchester City, who will both be hoping they can put that record right sooner rather than later. 18 teams have now played at the stadium on more than one occasion, with debt stricken Portsmouth the third most frequent visitors (5 times) followed by Stevenage, Cardiff and Tottenham (3 times each).

Of the 18 teams who have visited more than once, only two have managed to keep a 100% winning record at English football’s biggest venue and it seems it’s good news if you’re a northern seaside resort – Blackpool and Whitley Bay are the undefeated pair. It’s not such good news for Aston Villa, York, Shrewsbury, Cambridge and West Brom – they are the five teams to have played at the new Wembley more than once and failed to win on either occasion, with Cambridge and West Brom failing to even find the net on any of their visits.**

Comfortably the biggest win at the new Wembley is Whitley Bay’s 6-1 trouncing of Wroxham in the 2009-10 FA Vase final. The next biggest margins of victory are Southampton’s 4-1 Johnstone’s Paint Trophy thrashing of Carlisle United and Chelsea’s 3-0 win over Aston Villa, both also in the 2009-10 season. By far the most common scoreline (including after extra time) is 1-0, which has happened on 13 occasions (or 29.5% of the time), followed by 2-1 (on 7 occasions). In total, 113 goals have now been scored in competitive club football at the new Wembley at an average of 2.57 goals per game. Chelsea’s 14 is easily the biggest contribution from a single club.

There have only been five new-Wembley penalty shoot-outs to date and incredibly Manchester United have been involved in them all, winning three and losing two. United have also been a participant in all three 0-0 draws thus far at the new Wembley.