30 matches into the Premier League season, just six home wins. It's been mentioned a couple of times by pundits, but left broadly unexplained - there's a growing trend away from home advantage. We've witnessed it ourselves, with our home form being weaker than our away form and sloppy losses to defensive, counter-attacking teams. But other clubs have struggled for several seasons - Villa, Sunderland, etc. Of course, to win the league (a la Chelsea or Bournemouth last year) you still need very strong home form, but teams are now doing well without home invincibility. It's difficult to explain this as simply "counter attacking tactics". Yes, that's a big part of it and there is a disappointing lack of variety in styles of play in the Premier League. But it can't be just that - teams have been playing counterattacking football for years. Only a few bits of "analysis" from the rags: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...ams-claimed-three-points-fans-far-season.html Any thoughts?
Excellent post Rob and it does seem strange that there are so few 'home wins'. Is it that 'home' teams are almost trying too hard. or are the away teams upping their game??? I think it's a mixture of both and it will be interesting to see if that percentage changes as the season progresses. With a little bit of a 'rub of the green' we could easily have had 2 home wins ourselves, rather than a loss and a draw.
Yeah I certainly think there's an element of expectation about home teams that pushes them into more vulnerable positions going forward. But that makes it again sound like counter attacking football being to blame. I think we're one of the few clubs that doesn't play an entirely counter attacking game (we obviously do in part, particularly when a goal up) and yet for the last season or two, we've been markedly more vulnerable at home. Neil's preferred styles have tended to be either absorb pressure and play keep ball (not counterattack) for the first half and then break out in the second half (e.g. Watford away) or race out of the blocks straight from the off, get ahead, and then play counterattacking football (e.g. Middlesbrough playoff final). I wonder whether the pressure and expectation on footballers is so much now, and heightened at home, that it makes them lose their heads more? I've no stats for it but I feel like twenty years ago, or even five years ago, much younger players could come in to teams and be given freedom to make mistakes.
6 : 11 : 13 Indeed a curious set of results. I am willing to predict though that the 20% win rate will rise to at least double. I think that 30 is too small a statistical sample to be significant.
Judging from the (admittedly limited) DM article this trend goes back to last season too. If I've got some time I'll throw together some stats
Sky Sports have a chart which shows since the beginning of the football league: http://www.skysports.com/football/n...ly-six-home-wins-in-the-premier-league-so-far Shows a steady decline, but you can see that in the last three years there has been a dramatic decline in home wins and a dramatic increase in away wins. However, in the grand scheme of movements on the chart, there have been plenty of other equally dramatic leaps up and down. This article (from before the weekend's fixtures) backs that up further: http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/...-matchweek2-stats-feature-home-wins-rare.html Other than 01/02 season, away wins have always been below 30% of scores, but since 11/12 away wins have been above 30% in three of the last four seasons. In fact, the death of home advantage was called several seasons ago: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...e-has-become-a-thing-of-the-past-6289429.html Good call from the Indie! They propose the impact of less intimidating stadiums... CT makes the point that the first 30 games aren't a great statistical sample - which is true. Of the remaining 330 PL games to play, only 42% need to be home wins to drag the bar back to normal. But interestingly if you look at the DM's stats from each of the PL seasons for the first three rounds: 1992/93 - 14 - 47%, 1993/94 - 13 - 43%, 1994/95 - 14 - 47%, 1995/96 - 15 - 50%, 1996/97 - 12 - 40%, 1997/98 - 11 - 37%, 1998/99 - 10 - 33%, 1999/00 - 15 - 50%, 2000/01 - 13 - 43%, 2001/02 - 12 - 40%, 2002/03 - 12 - 40%, 2003/04 - 12 - 40%, 2004/05 - 14 - 47%, 2005/06 - 12 - 40%, 2006/07 - 18 - 60%, 2007/08 - 14 - 47%, 2008/09 - 16 - 53%, 2009/10 - 14 - 47%, 2010/11 - 15 - 50%, 2011/12 - 10 - 33%, 2012/13 - 13 - 43%, 2013/14 - 15 - 50%, 2014/15 - 9 - 30%, 2015/16 - 6 - 20% That suggests that the opening three rounds of the season feature a greater percentage of home wins than the season average - which makes sense as injuries and fatigue bite.
That's another 4 away wins and only 1 home win today. It is very strange. I can only hope we aren't the ones to break this trend tomorrow!
When you can infer statistical significance with at least 80% power with an alpha level of .05 so as to minimise type 1 and type 2 errors
I can see no logical explanation for it. The loss of home advantage possibly, but away advantage? A tricky one.
