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The Impact of the Fans on Premier League Teams

How important is their fanbase? The data speaks for itself.

Photo by Braden Hopkins on Unsplash
Photo by Braden Hopkins on Unsplash

Like many sports leagues, the last two seasons of the English Premier League have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic leading to matches being played behind closed doors. In other words, no fans were allowed to attend many matches. This inspired me to analyze the data and try to understand what impact the fans had on the home teams overall since fan presence is often attributed to providing the home team with a home-field advantage.

From the millions of Liverpool supporters chanting "You’ll Never Walk Alone" at Anfield Stadium which sends chills down your spine to the countless local Newcastle United fans who are among the most passionate and intense, many would argue the presence of fans is felt in one way or another.

Previously, I produced a holistic analysis of the data and statistics between matches with fans vs matches with no fans.

Home Field Advantage: Does It Exist Without Fans?

However, for this article, I want to drill down further into the specific teams and understand how influential fans were to their success. To do this, we’ll compare match results and statistics for each team between those matches played with fans and those without fans between the 2019–2021 seasons.

Teams Included

All teams from both seasons are included with the exception of those teams that were either relegated or promoted at the end of the 2019–2020 season. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have data from both groups of matches for those teams in the league.

The data collected were all matches the start of the 2019 season until March 15, 2021. These matches were split into two groups: one with fans present and one without. For more details on the data collection process, feel free to refer to the previous post.

Areas of Exploration

There are a few areas I’d like to explore based on some assumptions or general beliefs of how home advantage and fans impact the teams. This includes:

  • Overall winning rate of home teams which we can define as a percentage of total points won out of total potential points won
  • The distribution of fouls or yellow cards presented to the home team vs away team by the referee who may feel pressure from roaring fans
  • The percentage of shots on target by the home team. Are they taking more shots to satisfy fans and does it lead to more accuracy?

Metric of Comparison: Lift

To compare data averages from the two-match sets, we are going to calculate the lift between the values for each team.

Lift is simply the percentage of change between two values, usually used to compare before and after results in A/B testing.

Image created by author
Image created by author

Results Across Teams

The following charts and analyses look at the percent change or lift in the values for each team from matches with fans to matches without fans. In other words, a positive lift indicates the specific metric value was observed to be greater when fans are not present than when they are and vice-versa.

Home Win Rate

Image created by author
Image created by author

Looking at the home win rate, we can see that the majority of the teams saw a negative lift (-20% to -40%) for their home win rate. However, two teams specifically had a significant positive lift in their win rate that was above +40%: West Ham United and Southhampton. These two teams were among the worst five home records of the Premier League for the 2019–2020 season with more losses than wins.

Table from soccerstats.com
Table from soccerstats.com

Fast forward to the most recent 2020–2021 season, which was played primarily without fans, and both teams have the top ten best home records, with West Ham United in second place.

Table from soccerstats.com
Table from soccerstats.com

And on top of this, West Ham United finish the season in 5th this season allowing them to qualify for the Europa League beating out more popular teams like Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal.

Home Fouls Distribution

Image created by author
Image created by author

When looking at the distribution or breakdown of fouls committed by the home team, most teams have subtle lifts less than 0.25% in each direction. The two outliers to this are Liverpool and Chelsea which have over +0.25% lift in the percent of fouls they commit when fans are not present. These two teams are among the powerhouse teams of the Premier League with huge fan bases. Liverpool won the Champions League two years ago and Chelsea won it this year to give you a perspective.

What this tells us is that either these teams are playing a lot more aggressively without fans at home or the referee is calling more fouls on them in the absence of fans. This may introduce bias into his or her decision-making on the pitch.

Away Yellow Cards Distribution

Image created by author
Image created by author

Similarly, we can look at the distribution of yellow cards given to away teams in matches. All teams except for four have a clear negative lift here indicating that the distribution of yellow cards is a lot more balanced when fans are absent. However, this isn’t the case again for two teams: Leicester City and Crystal Palace who have close to a +0.50% increase in the distribution of yellow cards they receive when playing away.

Home Shots on Target Rate

Image created by author
Image created by author

Finally, we also looked at the rate of shots on target for the home team in the absence of fans. Surprisingly, most teams had a positive increase in their shot accuracy with Tottenham Hotspur having over + 0.25% lift. What this tells us perhaps is that teams may take more shots under the pressure of screaming fans yelling "shoot" or to satisfy the fan’s appetite for excitement. This, however, does not translate into more well-placed shots.

That being said, not all teams experienced a positive lift. West Ham United and Burnley each had over a -20% decline in their accuracy rate as shown above.

Final Thoughts

While there might not be enough data from matches or substantial differences here to draw any strong conclusions on a specific team’s performance, the analysis does provide us with insight into how matches may be more balanced in the absence of fans. Lower-ranked teams have a better chance of performing well whether it’s due to low bias from referees or the reversal of whatever effect screaming fans in the stadium may have on both teams.

Taking a step back and looking at the major Football leagues in Europe this year, something very interesting and rare occurred in this past 2020–2021 season that draws a parallel to the analysis here. Teams that haven’t won the league title in years won it:

  • Spain’s La Liga – Atlético Madrid (first title in 7 years)
  • Portugal’s Primeira Liga – Sporting CP (first title in 19 years)
  • Italy’s Serie A – Inter Milan (first title in 11 years)
  • France’s Ligue 1 – Lille (first title in 10 years)
  • Scottland’s Premiership – Rangers F.C. (first title in 10 years)

Here’s some food for thought: this all occurred in a year where fans were virtually non-existent.

Is this a coincidence or not? Maybe.


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