By Brian Sears
18 August 2011
Something freakish is happening to English football in the new season – more points are being won away than at home, across all divisions.
Typically you’d expect around 60 per cent of points to be won at home. This season so far, it’s 42 per cent.
Full details are in the table below.
It goes without saying, the season is young, very young. It’s barely up and running with only nine games played in the Premier League and 107 others across the Football League by the end of Wednesday evening, for 116 games in all. That’s only 5.697445972 per cent of the games that will be played this season.
And yet. That’s still 116 games, a decent sample, and incredibly, in all four divisions, more points have been gained by the away sides than the home teams.
It goes against all we know about football.
Take last season, for example. A total of 5,544 points were gained by the 92 league clubs, and 3,261 of those points were gained when the clubs were playing at home – that’s 58.8 per cent of the points.
Interestingly (and for future research), the percentage of home points gained went down through the leagues as crowds got smaller, from 63 per cent in the Premier League to 57 per cent in League Two.
But so far this season 319 points have been gained by the 90 clubs – with Tottenham and Everton yet to begin their campaigns – and only 134 points have come to clubs playing at home. That’s a paltry 42 per cent.
Over the whole of last season only six of the 92 clubs ended up gaining more points on the road than they did at home – in the Championship Hull (36 away 29 at home) and Scunthorpe (22-20); and in League Two Bury (42-39), Macclesfield (30-25), Cheltenham (28-24) and Hereford (30-23).
This season, half of the Football League, so far, are scoring more points on their travels than at home. And in each division there have been more away wins than home wins.
It surely can’t last can it? And why is it happening? Answers on a post card please. Or in a tweet, to @sportingintel
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