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Analysis: Home Advantage
Prozone analyse the controllable areas of team performance and how they can be modified in order to nullify home advantage while playing away.
There is a widely held assumption in football, and sport in general, that when teams play at home they have an inherent advantage over their opponents and a far greater chance of getting a result. This home advantage has been put down to many factors over the years. Some believe home advantage comes from playing in front of a passionate home crowd, while others believe that travelling to an away game breaks a team’s usual routine and gives the home team an edge.
Don’t blame the referee
In their recent book ‘Scorecasting’ Moskowitz and Wertheim have looked into the reasons for home advantage. Their conclusion was that home advantage was the result of unintentional referee bias. According to Prof. Tobias Moskowitz, when a contentious refereeing decision needs to be made and the crowd are screaming for the ‘right’ decision “referees start to see things the home crowd's way”. They argue that this isn’t due in any way to partisanship, but is rather the result of an inherent and subconscious psychological need for acceptance and social conformity.
With this unintentional refereeing bias being beyond the control of both players and coaches, and new season just around the corner, Prozone thought the time was right to interrogate the data and look at controllable areas of team performance and how they can be modified in order to nullify home advantage while playing away.
The evidence for home advantage
The following figures from the 2010/11 Premier League season show just how much of an effect home advantage has on results:
- • Champions Manchester United dropped just two points at home all season compared to 32 points dropped on the road
- • All 20 Premier League clubs won more points at home than away during the 2010/11 season
- • Only Arsenal and Blackburn scored more goals on their travels than at home
- • Only Wigan, Fulham and Everton let in more goals at home
- • Over the last five seasons, Premier League clubs have won an average of 11.9 more points at home than away
Unique and impartial analysis of team performance
Prozone’s data for the 2010/11 season has been used by Performance League to create a unique and impartial method of measuring team performance across the season by combining statistical analysis with match data. This then gives us a single performance rating for every match. This research has shown that teams not only get better results at home, they actually perform better on their own turf too. In fact, the Performance League figures show that the average home performance rating was 4.45, which is 19% higher than the average away rating of 3.58.
- • The highest match rating of 9.95 was recorded by a home team
- • The lowest match rating of -1.27 was recorded by an away team
- • Teams obtained 214.5 more Performance League points at home than on their travels
Analysing variables in away performances
This data would argue that while uncontrollable factors such as Moskowitz and Wertheim’s idea of unintentional referee bias, as well as travel fatigue and the psychological benefit of playing in front of home support may well play a part in home advantage, there are controllable factors that can also be addressed by coaches and players. Prozone have analysed the main areas of team performance that show significant variance between home and away games in an attempt to identify ways addressing those controllable factors and increasing the effectiveness of away performances.
There is no significant difference in defensive trends whether home or away, therefore the attacking trends in a match can be identified as the major difference in a team’s performances on the road. Looking at the data for home team attacking performance, it is clear to see that this is where the home advantage lies.
On average home teams enjoy:
- • 4.8% more successful passes
- • 8.9% more passes in the attacking half
- • 17.4% more entries into the penalty area
- • 20.6% more shots
- • 22.6% more shots on target
- • 24.3% more shots inside
This level of dominance will obviously lead to greater opportunities and better results, and while shooting accuracy for home teams (49.3%) and away teams (48.4%) is very similar, the greater number of chances created means home teams score an extra 0.42 goals per game on average.
Variations in attacking play away from home
The data shows a clear reduction in the amount and effectiveness of attacking play away from home. This reduction in the amount of possession in and around the opposing penalty area ultimately leads to a lack of chances, a lack of goals and a lack of points. In fact, Prozone analysis has shown that Premier League teams attempt 24.3% fewer shots, deliver 22.8% fewer crosses and score 28.9% less goals on their travels than they would at home.
The effect of this more defensive style of away performance, and the incentive to approach away fixtures with a more attacking mindset, can be seen when you analyse statistics from the last five Premier League seasons. During that time the team that has had the most number of shots on goal in a match has a 79% chance of avoiding defeat and a 53% chance of walking off with all three points.
Therefore, it would appear that the key to a successful away performance is to take a risk and attempt to attack as you would at home. While tradition and rational dictates that a more defensive approach is an appropriate tactic when playing away from home, Prozone’s analysis suggests that a more offensive set-up could be more effective. This can be seen in Arsenal’s away performances in the 2010/11 Premier League season where they opened up more away from home and in the process scored 39 away goals (13 more than their closest rivals) and picked up 31 points. This would seem to add credence to the idea that while there is an undoubted need for away teams to protect themselves away from home by covering up at the back and plugging the gaps in midfield, finding a way to gain possession in the attacking half, maintain a decent number of attacking entries into the opposition area and create a significant amount of attempts on goal is statistically the more effective way to gain a result in away fixture.
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