Study suggests home advantage has increased in Premier League with games played behind closed doors

Matches have been played without fans since lockdown

Home advantage has grown stronger rather than weakened in the Premier League following the move to playing behind closed doors, a new study shows.

Research by the CIES Football Observatory looked at 63 leagues across the world before and after the coronavirus outbreak forced matches to be played in empty stadiums.

It found that on average, the home win percentage in matches played between January 1, 2015 and March 31, 2020 was 44.3 per cent. Between April 1, 2020 and August 24, 2020, that had dropped to 42.2 per cent.

However, in the English top flight the home win percentage for matches behind closed doors was 46.7 per cent, up from 45.9 per cent pre-Covid.

It was a different story in the Championship, where the percentage of home wins dropped by 5.2 per cent when matches were played behind closed doors.

The biggest change, the survey showed, was in the Greek Super League, where the home win percentage dropped from 47.9 per cent to 32.8 per cent.

The Bundesliga, the first of Europe's 'Big Five' leagues to restart after the suspension of competition, was second behind Greece with a drop of 15 per cent.

At the other extreme was the Swiss Super League, where the home win percentage increased by 8.5 per cent, from 42.3 per cent to 50.8 per cent.

PA