How Important is Home Advantage?

The recent suggestion of playing remaining Premier League games at neutral venues has seen opposition from Brighton and West Ham, arguing that relegation should be taken off the table if the matches are played in neutral grounds.

Brighton’s chief executive Paul Barber has argued that his players not being in a ‘home stadium and in familiar surroundings’ would be a disadvantage that wouldn’t be counteracted by not having away games, and that this would compromise the integrity of the competition.

But how real is home advantage, and what causes it?

This season in the Premier League, the home team has won 45% of the time, compared to the away team winning 30% of the time. Last season it was 48% home victory against 34% away, and the season before that 46% against 28%.

So historically, the home team generally does have an advantage. However, it is an advantage that has been slowly decreasing over the years.

A Sky Sports report in 2017 showed that the percentage of home games won has been slowly decreasing over the years, while the away percentage has been increasing.

The home win percentage has dropped from around 50% in the 1970s down closer to the 40% (on average) mark in the present day.

There are likely to be a number of factors playing into this, but one of the more obvious ones is comfort of travel.

Gone are the days of players crammed into cramped coaches. Away travel is far more comfortable now with more luxurious coaches, hotel stays to avoid long journey on the day and even speedy internal flights at times.

With ease of travel meaning that away day experiences aren’t as uneasy or unfamiliar as they have been historically, this makes the advantage of home ‘familiarity’ cited by Barber a loose claim. Especially since it’s a problem every team will have to deal with.

Top level stadiums are kitted out with excellent facilities and while the pegs may not quite be in the same place, it’s something the players will most likely be able to get over should fixtures be played at neutral stadiums.

What’s possibly a stronger argument in regards to home grounds is pitch dimensions. Take Tottenham’s downturn in home form, for example, when they their player their home fixtures on the vast expanses of the Wembley pitch.

It’s again an issue that all managers and teams across the league would be dealing with though - everybody would be operating under the same unprecedented conditions.

It is strange that Barber’s argument doesn’t extend to any advantage lost by not having a home crowd behind his side.

As with many aspects of home advantage, it is difficult to pin down exactly how and in what way the crowd can boost a home side.

In a sports science study, footage of a Liverpool vs Leicester match from the 1998-99 season was shown to 40 referees. Half saw a version with sound from the crowd included, the other half without .

It found that the referees who watched the game with the crowd noises included were less likely to give fouls against Liverpool. So there is some evidence to say that a home crowd can give you an edge in some situations.

But this is just scraping the surface of what home advantage is and how effective it can be. There are many factors to it and it’s a topic that has a range of research on it.

It could well be argued that without fans, any ground could be considered as pretty much neutral.

What we can be sure on though is that absolute integrity is lost already when the grounds are empty - the conditions are no longer the same. This is the main reason why the argument from Barber doesn’t really hold up.

If there is so much concern about the integrity of the remaining games, then why wasn’t this argument made immediately after playing games behind closed doors was suggested? And why doesn’t the argument of integrity extend to teams competing for Champions League places, or even for more prize money from finishing higher?

It is no coincidence that two of the clubs publicly against neutral venues and asking that relegation be taken off the table are two relegation threatened clubs.

Having no relegation would make restarting the league utterly pointless.

It would be a completely wasted effort to pull off such an ambitious operation, then not have any teams go down. to The remaining fixtures may as well be cancelled and the title handed to the Liverpool now.

Ultimately, the argument from West Ham and Brighton is a weak one - and the self interest is painfully obvious.