There Is No Advantage In Play At Home in a Time of COVID-19

I just loving analysing data, and finding trends. As a lad, I would continually draw league tables and calculate averages. I have never…
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There Is Little Advantage In Playing At Home in a Time of COVID-19

I just loving analysing data, and finding trends. As a lad, I would continually draw league tables and calculate averages. I have never lost this love, and I still analyse trends and forecasts wherever I can.

So, after watching Scotland doing so well away from home, and in seeing Scottish teams winning away from home in European matches, it is becoming obvious that home advantage doesn’t have much of an affect in football. The main difference must be the crowd.

So, I wanted to prove this, and surprising the statistics show no real advantage to one team or another. I thus looked at the Scottish Premier League for 2019–2020, and the current league. For SPL home wins, in 2019–2020, I found that there were 44% home wins, against 30% away wins. But with the current league, there were an equal 40% home wins and the same away wins:

In terms of goals, there has been a lower average this year, and where the home goals have dropped from 1.55 per game for the home team, to 1.18. The average goals for the home team drops to 1.37, and a small increase in the away goals (to 1.18):

The smaller teams such as Ross County, St. Mirren and Hamilton actually have more away wins that home ones. Here is the 2019–2020 table [here]:

and the current one [here]:

When I analyse the English Premier League for 2019/2020, I get 45% chance of a home win, 24% for a draw, and 31% for an away win, 1.52 goals at home and 1.21 goals away from home. For 2020, there is a 38% chance of a home win, a 19% chance of a draw, and 43% for an away win. The average home goals is 1.4, but the away goals is even higher at 1.6 [here]:

and the previous season [here]:

Conclusions

The crowd is the only significant difference between 2019–2020 and the current league, so it looks like having a crowd cheering your team is a significant factor. I alway thought that it was because the team knew the pitch, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Well, I’m off to watch Hearts, now, and analyse their averages.