Premier League Gameweek 3

big rons sovereign

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So erm, is everyone gonna start cry wanking about Leicester getting 3 pens today, or is it just when United get one?
 

PoTMS

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Just realised Son has picked up an injury and will miss the game against us next week. Terrible news for the lad but good news for us.
 

Brwned

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That’s completely bonkers. I speculate that home advantage is reversed because the home side are disturbed psychologically because they don’t have the home crowd behind them. It doesn’t feel right for them.
I think a few sports economists have run the numbers on home advantage and come to the conclusion it was almost entirely down to fans influencing the referees in small ways that tipped the balance. Take that away there wasn't much to home advantage.
 

1966

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It doesn't affect performance too much but it has a big affect on the refs doesn't it?

Weren't they shown to be much fairer towards away sides since there were no crowds?
I'm a scientist but not an expert on this subject by any means. In short, though, yes. There's definitely a significant (in the strict statistical sense) interaction in that crowds influence refs' decisions in their favour. I'm not sure exactly how big the effect is but it's "big enough".

Now you've piqued my interest too because I'm not sure if or how researchers control for the effect of the ref on mediating the relationship between crowd and results in general. It could be a significant confound. I'm probably gonna go research some more.
 

Classical Mechanic

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I think a few sports economists have run the numbers on home advantage and come to the conclusion it was almost entirely down to fans influencing the referees in small ways that tipped the balance. Take that away there wasn't much to home advantage.
6 of 24 home games won seems to suggest there‘s potentially a new dynamic going on though.
 

Amarsdd

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So erm, is everyone gonna start cry wanking about Leicester getting 3 pens today, or is it just when United get one?
you know the answer already. Leicester's 2-5 win had nothing to do with the three penalties whereas when United win by 4 goals, its everything to do with the one penalty.
 

1966

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6 of 24 home games won seems to suggest there‘s potentially a new dynamic going on though.
It's a very small sample size compared to what they're used to dealing with but, as you say, this is also a whole new paradigm: long consecutive stretches of elite games being played with no crowds whatsoever. You'd have to control for general start-of-season unpredictability, among other factors, but I agree that it's not nothing.

It'd certainly be worth conducting more research on the post-CV games, and I'm sure that will be done in due course. Probably as soon as the crowds are back to normal capacity to maximise the sample size of games (the intermediate phases may be useful in themselves if they can show e.g. a linear scaling of effect size with crowd size).
 

Classical Mechanic

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It's a very small sample size compared to what they're used to dealing with but, as you say, this is also a whole new paradigm: long consecutive stretches of elite games being played with no crowds whatsoever. You'd have to control for general start-of-season unpredictability, among other factors, but I agree that it's not nothing.

It'd certainly be worth conducting more research on the post-CV games, and I'm sure that will be done in due course. Probably as soon as the crowds are back to normal capacity to maximise the sample size of games.
Pretty sure that similar happened in Germany when the started their season again after the first lockdown.
 

1966

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Pretty sure that similar happened in Germany when the started their season again after the first lockdown.
Yeah, I remember some news articles about that. As I say, I think you're right that there's something there. I'm looking forward to a rigorous academic analysis so we can hopefully learn something new.

I think it's quite hard for football fans to accept that they may actually have very little effect on the outcome of matches, even when they sing their hearts out in the stands. I hope there's a larger effect size discovered but we'll see. :)
 

Brwned

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6 of 24 home games won seems to suggest there‘s potentially a new dynamic going on though.
Of the 24 games it looks like away teams were generally the better teams on paper, so the starting assumption would be it's those two established factors working together: better teams generally win, home or away, and refs tip the balance in tight games in favour of the home team. It's 3 rounds of a random fixture list after all. The general premise underlying the analysis should remain the same, in that there's little evidence that home teams "play better" at home, it's just the small margins of official decisions that make it seem that way. In a game like footy a game can flip on a couple of marginal decisions. You can find all kinds of statistical quirks from small sample sizes too, e.g. just two draws seems unusual at this stage. Then regression to the mean starts to play a role.
 

Antisocial

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Moyes won't be allowed back into the stadium on a match-day ever again on this evidence :lol:
 

SilentWitness

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It’s going to be one of those surprise seasons again isn’t it? :annoyed:
 

Cheech Wizard

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Wolves long season from last season and no proper pre-season looks to be catching up with them. Lost their shape and organisation a bit.
 

Classical Mechanic

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It’s going to be one of those surprise seasons again isn’t it? :annoyed:
Setup for your lads to win it. Good transfer window, no Europe and got the rest before the start of the season to make a strong start. It would be kind of poetic for Everton to take the title off Liverpool too. If there’s a surprise winner Everton are a good shout.
 

always_hoping

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Watching Wolves in the last few games is simliar to Man United. Much better than what they are showing but lack of fitness and sharpness after no real pre-season.
 

90 + 5min

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Setup for your lads to win it. Good transfer window, no Europe and got the rest before the start of the season to make a strong start. It would be kind of poetic for Everton to take the title off Liverpool too. If there’s a surprise winner Everton are a good shout.
I have to admit that they have that Ranieri Leicester aura. At the start of PL. Who knows how far it will take them.