Through this project, we studied the impact of fans in premier league matches. The impact of fans needs to be quantified in order to analyse it statistically. For this we analysed the match summaries and standings collected from the premier league website.
The original data was obtained from this repository The two seasons in consideration are 2019-20 and 2020-21 (entire season's data not considered)
- The presence of fans makes a difference in the final result of the game.
- The presence of fans helps home teams to win more points from losing positions.
- The presence of fans makes a difference in the game style of teams (ex. Possession, shots attempted, shots on target, goals scored, etc.)
- The presence of fans puts more pressure on the referee to make more calls in favour of the home team
- Presence of fans helps the home teams to score more in the dying moments of the game, as they are more vocal at these times in tight games
Here's a snapshot of the exploratory data analysis and the inferences:
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The number of wins for the home team is higher in the presence of fans and the number of losses is lesser - as expected.
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The teams have a higher chance of losing from winning positions in the absence of fans
We observed a noticeable difference in most of the statistics that we have analyzed, although a lot of them have not been proved to be significantly different during hypothesis testing. We conclude that fans, as the “12th man” in matches are an influential factor of football matches and were dearly missed in the 2020/21, i.e., the pandemic season.
The following parameters had statistically significant difference:
- Points won from losing positions (Home Team)
- Shots Taken (Home Team)
- Home Fouls Conceded
- Away Yellow Cards Conceded