Analysis

Premier League goals and away wins at record highs: Has home advantage been wiped out?

Sixty-one per cent of matches this season in the Premier League have been won by the away team; Highest figure for a full season is 33.7 per cent in 2018/19

Thursday 24 September 2020 11:40, UK

The new Premier League season is only two weeks old, but early signs suggest home advantage has been wiped out entirely and there will be an abundance of goals.

From the 18 games played so far, there have been 11 away wins, only seven home wins and no draws whatsoever.

Yes, it is early days, but this trend has been rising since lockdown. In June, after the restart last season, away wins soared to 38 per cent - before dipping to 29 per cent in July.

The spike suggests empty stadiums affected results before regressing towards average levels. That exponential rise appears to be happening again on a grander scale this season in the Premier League: away wins currently stand at 61 per cent.

For context, in 2018/19, just 33.7 per cent of all matches ended with an away win - and that figure was the highest ratio for top-flight away wins in the history of league football.

As it stands, this season's Premier League is on course to double that record.

This season's data is, of course, skewed from only playing 18 games, but away teams have only ever won five or more games in a matchday in 14 per cent of rounds since the start of 2010/11.

When you consider that has now happened in two successive matchdays, coupled with the fact there were only eight games played in the opening round, there is a clear deviation from the norm.

These extremes are even clearer to see when you place them in the context of English football's entire history - since the Football League kicked off in 1888.

The graphic below shows the seasonal win percentage for home and away teams, in addition to draws, over the past 132 years. Away wins currently stand at an all-time high, with home wins and draws at all-time lows.

Goals galore

The new campaign has also kicked off with an abundance of goals, 67 to date, and the most recent round produced 44 - more than any other 10-game matchday in Premier League history.

The average Premier League game this season has produced 3.72 goals, the highest ratio in 60 years - predating England's World Cup triumph in 1966.

While a level of normality is expected to return, these wild early trends suggest the absence of fans is influencing results and, perhaps, the explosive gung-ho start.