Football: How much weight to apply to home form

approx 2x . twice as many  matches result in home win than away win.

^ I don't think thats what he means


when i price is up giving Chelsea's home form and Man Utd's away form, i think Chelsea are even slight value!

He seems to be on about teams which have good Home records but bad Away records at the same time.

I would say it is completely irrelevant. Over the long term a team that is, say, the 4th or 5th best in the league, will end up with the 4th or 5th (maybe 2nd or 6th ) best results both Home and Away.

As for Pullein, he did analysis of this a few years ago and found it to be a myth that there are 'home specialists' . Yes a lot of teams over 12 games or so will be 4th best in home points won and 14th best for away points , but these things do not continue for long and eventually both Home and Away points won will reflect the abilty of the teams.

When teams are equal the Home should be around 5/4 and the Away 5/2 ish , so as United seem pretty clearly to be somewhat better than Chelsea, the thing to do was lay Chelsea or back United, disregarding 'Away Form' .

And i posted i'd backed United last night before anyone says.....

Thats the trouble, looking at stats for this that did not heavily take into account Man U's average/poor away form compared to their great home form made it very hard to price up. When i first glanced at the prices i thought Chelsea were too short, but United's record away from home made Chelsea look value when i gave Chelsea's home form and United's away form heavier weighting. Was i disregarding United's overall results (and not just away results) too much??. In the end i went with my original feeling and layed Chelsea. sigh.

Were you only looking at results ?

I think that was the right call ,though Chelsea just about deserved it.

In the long term you would expect a team to get 58.71% of their points at Home and 41.29% Away

United have 66.67% Home and 33.33% Away . I wouldn't expect that discrepancy to continue, as there is no reason for it .

The only sequences of this sort that you can expect to continue are those with a clear reason for it; such as plastic pitches or playing at altitude.

In the 'why england lose' book, kuper and symzanski argue its two-thirds of a goal per game, but I can't remember if they only looked at internationals for that.

Tobermory....re the 58.71% home and 41.29% away points expectation, are those figures specific to the Premiership, or to all English Leagues, or to an even wider field?

It was for the premier league a while back, so probably not specific to anything right now.

Though i'd be pretty sure the long term average in most leagues would be 57-60 % points won at home and 40-43 % Away

The only stat i think that's worthwhile is the stat that 95% of footballers are as dense as a small planet .

Stake accordingly , especially where discipline and red cards are concerned  [;)]

50kgs should do it
beyond that its pure obesity

Obviously it varies between matches (depending on the strength of the teams) but on average home advantage is worth 0.4 of a goal.

Taking your example of a match between Chelsea and Manchester United.

Chelsea's probability of winning in rough figures would be:

Home 50%
Neutral venue 40%
Away 30%

hth

I've always worked with 0.3 ebasson

for two evenly matched teams

0.4 of a goal is a decent enough estimate for the average home advantage in the Premiership.

How it varies from match to match is one of the key parts of successful football betting.