The relationship between team ability and home advantage in the English football league system RAMCHANDANI, Girish <http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8650-9382>, MILLAR, Robbie and WILSON, Darryl Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/28515/ This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version RAMCHANDANI, Girish, MILLAR, Robbie and WILSON, Darryl (2021). The relationship between team ability and home advantage in the English football league system. German Journal of Exercise and Sport Research, 51 (3), 354-361. Copyright and re-use policy See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive http://shura.shu.ac.uk Main Article Ger J Exerc Sport Res Girish Ramchandani · Robbie Millar · Darryl Wilson https://doi.org/10.1007/s12662-021-00721-x Academy of Sport and Physical Activity, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK Received: 9 July 2020 Accepted: 16 April 2021 © The Author(s) 2021 The relationship between team ability and home advantage in the English football league system Introduction for men’s and women’s competition. Te 1995). In other words, performance has HA found for football in the Pollard two components, namely: quality and Te phenomenon of home advantage et al. (2017a) study was somewhat below HA. If every team in a league enjoys the (HA), where home teams in sports com- its historical position relative to other same level of HA, then performance is petitions win over half of the games sports. Within football, the existence dependent on quality alone; however, played under a balanced home and away of HA across national domestic leagues if some teams have superior HA then schedule (Courneya & Carron, 1992), worldwide was illustrated by Pollard their performance will be naturally en- has received widespread attention from and Gomez (2014a). Incorporating 157 hanced. What this means is that HA is researchers. Te existence of HA has national domestic football leagues over only relevant for the overall performance been documented in professional team six seasons between 2006 and 2012, this ofaclubifitishigherorlowerthan sports such as domestic football leagues study showed that HA was present in the average HA in its division (Peeters (Pollard, Prieto, & Gomez, 2017a), sin- all continents, but varied considerably &vanOurs,2020). Te literature on gle-sporteventssuchastheIAAFWorld between countries. A separate study by this aspect of HA can be categorised Indoor Championships (Ramchandani the same authors concluded that the into two broad strands: divisional (inter &Wilson,2020)aswellasmultisport HA effect was also evident in women’s league) HA and positional (intra league) events including the Olympic and Para- football leagues throughout Europe, but HA. Tese strands of the literature are lympic Games (Wilson & Ramchandani, the level of HA was lower than the reviewed below. 2018) and the Commonwealth Games corresponding men’s leagues (Pollard & (Ramchandani & Wilson, 2012). How- Gomez, 2014b). Te potential causes of Divisional HA ever, there are also studies that illustrate HA in football include factors such as Te hierarchical structure of domes- the absence of HA in specific sport- crowd effects, familiarity, referee bias, tic football leagues regulated through ing contests and even the prevalence of travel effects, territoriality, psychological the system of promotion and relegation a disadvantage in some cases (Wright & factors and tactics (Pollard, 2008). How- means that teams that feature in higher Voyer, 1995). It has been suggested that, ever, as noted by Pollard et al. (2017a) divisions are relatively stronger than except for subjectively evaluated sports, determining how these factors oper- teams that feature in lower divisions. HA is not a major factor in individual ate and the way in which they affect Divisional HA is related to a specific di- sports, and its role in individual sports performance is still unclear. visionasa whole (e.g. the PremierLeague is much less comparable to its role in in England) and allows for making com- team sports (Jones, 2013). HA and team ability parisons between different divisions in A meta-analysis by Jamieson (2010) thesamecountry(e.g.betweenthePre- concluded that the HA effect for soccer Tere is growing interest among re- mier League and the Championship in (association football) was significantly searchers on the relationship between England) or between different leagues stronger than that of nine other sports HAinfootballandteamability. Teterms in two or more countries (e.g. between (American football, baseball, hockey, “quality” and “strength” are sometimes the Premier League in England and the basketball, cricket, Australian rules foot- used interchangeably by researchers Bundesliga in Germany). ball/rugby, golf, tennis and boxing). when referring to team ability. Te Research on the effect of team abil- A more recent and extensive study by performance of a team in a particular ity on divisional HA in football has been Pollard et al. (2017a) examined HA season depends on the quality of that conductedmainlyfromtheperspectiveof between 15 different team sports using team, the quality of its opponents and the top two divisions in domestic football data from 165 different countries both thesizeoftheHA(Clarke&Norman, leagues and provided some mixed find- German Journal of Exercise and Sport Research Main Article ings. Some studies have shown that HA is A more recent study by Peeters and van caraz, Zhang, & Zhang (2019)andLago- of a similar magnitude in the top two di- Ours (2020), covering 45 seasons of En- Penas and Lago-Ballesteros (2011)found visions. Pollard (2006)comparedHAin glish professional football from 1973/74 that superior and inferior teams did not the first and second divisions of five Eu- to 2017/18, also reported that absolute experience the same HA in the Chinese ropean domestic football leagues (Ger- HA is about the same in all divisions, Super League and La Liga respectively. many, England, France, Spain and Italy) ranging from 0.59 to 0.64 in terms of Teir findings confirm that a superior across six seasons between 1996–97 and points per match or from 0.44 to 0.46 in home team would be expected to win 2001–02 and observed that “very small terms of goal difference. a higher percentage of games against in- differences” existed between the top two Elsewhere in Europe, Armatas, Yian- ferior visiting teams, than against equally divisions in each of these countries. Sub- nakos, Seaton, and Rig (2013) found sig- matched visitors. sequent research by Dosseville (2007), nificantly higher HA appeared in the Using a balanced panel of 65 clubs, Seckin and Pollard (2008) and Sanchez, top division in the Greek Super League which featured in one of the top four di- Garcia-Calvo, Leo, Pollard, and Gomez compared with the amateur divisions in visions of English football in every sea- (2009) found no significant differences in Greece, suggesting the results could be son over the period 1973/74–2017/18, the HA values between the top two di- associated with higher attendances and Peeters and van Ours (2020)concluded visions in France (between 2002/03 and support of the home crowd. Conversely, that individual clubs differ substantially 2004/05), Turkey (between 2002/03 and a study of Portuguese football examining in the relative HA they enjoy. Tey found 2005/06) and Spain (between 1980/81 the level of HA in the professional league that HA fluctuated between 0.36 and and 2006/07) respectively. compared to semiprofessional and ama- 0.99 points per match (and between 0.27 More recent studies have reported that teur leagues over a period of 11 seasons and 0.71 in terms of goal difference). On HA in the second (lower) division of reported that HA was significantly low- the assumption that clubs that can spend domestic football leagues is typically of est in the professional league (Almeida moremoneyshouldbeabletohaveabet- a higher magnitude compared with the &Volossovitch,2017). ter team, Peeters and van Ours (2020) top (higher) division of domestic football utilised relative wage (expressed as the leagues. HA has been shown to be sig- Positional HA ratio of the club’s wage sum and the av- nificantly higher in the second division Positional HA is concerned with indi- erage wage sum in the division for the football leagues of both Brazil (Almeida, vidual teams. Teams’ final league ta- season) as a measure of quality, which did Oliveira, & Silva, 2011) and Iran (Pollard, ble position is a function of their match not have a significant effect on the rela- Armatas, & Sani, 2017b). A more recent outcomes during the course of a season tive HA of teams. However, they did not study by Leite and Pollard (2018)quanti- (wins, draws and losses), which provides examine whether HA varies significantly fied HA for seven seasons from 2010/11 a composite measure of both their offen- according to the league table position of to 2016/17 of the top two divisions of do- sive (goals scored) and defensive (goals teams. mestic football leagues for 47 countries conceded) abilities. Heuer and Rubner Building on this body of research and worldwide and concluded that HA was (2014) note that team strength in foot- in view of the disparate and sometimes significantly more likely to be higher in ball remains constant during the course contradictory findings of previous stud- the second division than the top division. of a season apart from short-time fluc- ies, our study examines the relationship Tey contended this may be due to play- tuations. Hence, the final league table between team ability and HA from both ers and referees in the top division being position in each season can be consid- a divisional (inter league) and positional better trained to avoid being influenced ered a reasonable proxy for team ability.
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