Part 5 – There’s No Place Like Home

Played 19, won 18, drawn 1… Man Utd’s record at Old Trafford last season was near faultless.

With one draw and one loss, Chelsea’s home record the previous season was almost as convincing.

In fact, the ability to win at home is a trait of Champions.  The table below illustrates the home records of the Premier League Champions for the last ten seasons.

Over the last ten seasons, the Champions have only lost nine home games between them, with a third of these lost by Arsenal in 2001-02.  More points have been dropped from draws, but only eight matches over the last six seasons have been drawn by the eventual champions.

Of the 13 home matches not won by the Champions Elect in the last six seasons, only four were against the old ‘Big Four’ (with Chelsea also losing at home to Man City in 2009-10, where they had finished 10^th the previous season) making factoring in these dropped points into the par-result model impractical.

So far this season, the six APLT featured teams have played 23 home matches, with only four of them not won by the home team.

The Alternative Premier League Table illustrates the level of consistency in the top three teams quite clearly.

One small blip for Chelsea (the away loss to Man Utd) is the only negative gradient (dropped points to par) for any of the top three teams.  Meanwhile, Liverpool and Arsenal have had below-par results in four of their eight matches, the former off-setting the damage with wins in two par-1s (away at Arsenal and Everton).  Spurs have managed to stabilise their season after below par results in their first two games, with five pars in a row (and only narrowly failed to pull two points back against Newcastle after a late Ameobi strike at St.James’ Park).

Next Sunday’s match at Old Trafford between the two Manchesters guarantees one of them to drop points-to-par for the first time this season.  The remaining four APLT teams all have 3-point par matches,  so Man City are the only team who can pick up points-to-par.