This is my first post in a series that looks at data from the big football leagues over the past 2017/2018 season. Hopefully we'll be able to pick up some patterns that hold up across the different leagues.
| Total Goals | Number of Matches |
|---|---|
| 0 | 28 |
| 1 | 72 |
| 2 | 75 |
| 3 | 80 |
| 4 | 48 |
| 5 | 25 |
| 6 | 9 |
| 7 | 5 |
| 8 | 4 |
| 9 | 2 |
| Grand Total | 348 |
Looking at the breakdown, the number of games under/over 2.5 goals are at 50%.
| Row Labels | Count of Match | % |
|---|---|---|
| A | 104 | 30% |
| D | 81 | 23% |
| H | 163 | 47% |
| Grand Total | 348 | 100% |
The home team has won 47% of the matches played, which is significantly more than the expected 33% if there was no such thing as a home ground advantage. So we can conclude that there probably is such a thing as home ground advantage in La Liga.
It's also interesting to note that draws have occurred in only 23% of matches.
For our purposes, let's define a favorite as the team which the bookies have to win at odds of 1.8 or less. Looking at their home games, there were 114 instances where the home team had odds less than 1.8 to win.
In the end, they won 77 of them, drew 26 and lost 11. Here's an interesting statistic. Here's the return if you had bet a dollar each match on Home, Draw or Away:
| Initial Outlay | Home | Draw | Away |
|---|---|---|---|
| ($114.00) | $108.46 | $135.36 | $80.00 |
If you had bet on a draw every time there was a home favorite, you would have made a $21 or 18% profit. Not bad, considering betting on the favorite would have actually netted you a loss. Just shows how much of an advantage that the bookies have.
Hope the analysis will provide some food for thought when placing your next wager. All data from football-data.co.uk
