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27/04/2007 No.14
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Kevin Pullein
Friday April 27, 2007
 
 
  When venues are reversed, fortunes may also be reversed.

It is easy to make the mistake of assuming that a team which unexpectedly defeated much stronger adversaries earlier in the season is capable of beating them in the return fixture. Five months ago Fulham beat Arsenal in the Premiership but that does not improve their prospects of beating them at the Emirates on Sunday.

In the past 10 seasons the results of the first meetings between each set of opponents saw 45% finish in home wins, 28% draws and 27% away wins. As a general rule, therefore, we can say that 27% of away teams win. But when teams who had won at home later played the same opponents away, the proportion of away wins was 30%, better than before. Similarly the first set of fixtures suggests 45% of teams win at home but, when teams who had won away later played the same opponents at home, the proportion of home wins was 49%.
 
     

Those statistics show teams who won the first meeting of a season were slightly more likely to win the second. The reason, however, is that as a group they were slightly better than others. The best teams in football win less often than in higher-scoring sports such as basketball but they still win more often than not. The football teams who win the first meeting of a season are, as a group, slightly superior to average.

It follows that in the second meeting they will record results which are slightly superior to average. The mistake is to think that the poorer teams in that group who did unexpectedly well before will do so again. When venues are reversed, fortunes may also be reversed.



 

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