Study: The Advantage of Playing at Home...Damion Stewart's Jamaica (Post Training Ground Fight) Defeat Mexico

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Congratulations to Damion Stewart's Jamaica (Stewart came on in the 75th minute) as they defeated Sven Ericksson's Mexico in Jamaica.
"...Ricardo Fuller, the man who was involved in a bust-up with teammates Damion and Demar Stewart on Thursday night, displayed similar fighting spirit last night as his 14th-minute goal helped Jamaica edge Mexico 1-0...And even with four minutes of time added, the Reggae Boyz rearguard, led superbly by Tyrone Marshall, Ian Goodison, Claude Davis and then Damion 'Stew Peas' Stewart, proved too much for the Mexicans... Match Report
Earlier, Stewart and Stoke's Ricardo Fuller had gotten into a training ground, gotten into a fight and been fined - See: "Boyz apologise, fined for training ground bust-up. "...Fuller reacted angrily to a series of tough challenges from defender Demar Stewart. The two are said to have exchanged heated words, which led to a physical exchange, at which point, Stewart's older brother, Damion, got involved..."]


An interesting non-QPR specific article, but something to consider when talk is heard of moving to a new, bigger stadium.

New York Times/Daniel Altman - Keeping Score

It is a busy time in the soccer world. The top teams in Europe and South America are playing multiple tournaments, Major League Soccer is heading for the playoffs, and hundreds of players are participating in qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup. With their squads stretched thin, clubs are looking for any kind of edge. The biggest edge of all could be playing at home — but why?

Red Bulls Champions League UEFA Cup Other International Cup International Leagues The home-field advantage is more entrenched in soccer than in perhaps any other sport. To lose at home is viewed as an unacceptable result by fans; inferior teams must be beaten, and good teams must at least be tied. According to the statistics, those expectations are more realistic than one might think.

In the last seven seasons of the English Premier League, the average goal difference a game among teams playing at home was a positive number, 0.39. Those extra goals translated into more points in the standings, too. With 3 points for a win and 1 for a tie, teams garnered an average of 0.57 points more a game at home than on the road.

The home-field advantage is uniform across Europe’s top leagues. In La Liga in Spain, the edge was 0.37 goals and 0.58 points over the past seven years. In Serie A in Italy, it was 0.40 goals and 0.61 points.

Inside the individual leagues, however, there are some stark differences. Of the teams that played all seven seasons in the Premier League, four had by far the biggest home-field advantages: Fulham, Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur and Everton. For each of those teams, playing at home was worth almost an entire extra goal, and 0.71 to 0.85 additional points.

It may not be too surprising that the top teams, like Manchester United and Chelsea, do not appear in this list. If a team wins all the time, on the road or at home, it has no home-field advantage. But Barcelona, the second-winningest club in Spain, holds one of the widest margins in La Liga — 0.70 additional points — at its legendary Camp Nou.

Indeed, some stadiums can create an intimidating atmosphere. Newcastle is known for its loyal supporters, thousands of whom wear their short-sleeved, black-and-white jerseys to matches even in the biting cold of the northern English winter. And perhaps most feared are fans of the Turkish team Galatasaray, with their tradition of hanging banners that read Welcome to Hell for the benefit of visitors to Ali Sami Yen Stadium.

You don’t need a big, intimidating stadium to have a big home advantage, however. Fulham’s Craven Cottage, in stylish southwest London, seats just 26,000 people — and the team spent two of the last seven seasons playing at Queens Park Rangers’ smaller Loftus Road ground while the Cottage was being expanded. Villarreal’s El Madrigal stadium, which at 0.74 points harbors the biggest home advantage in La Liga, has just 25,000 seats — more than half the population of the town of Villarreal. Compare that with 52,387 seats in Newcastle or 98,772 in Barcelona.

The distance traveled to matches does not seem to play a role. Italian teams always have to make a long trip to play at Cagliari in Sardinia and Palermo in Sicily. Similarly, the island teams must make quite a journey for road games. Although Cagliari had a strong home advantage in its four recent seasons in Serie A, Palermo’s edge was a tad lower than the league average.

In the presence of these paradoxes, other processes are at work. Last year, a team of researchers led by Peter Dawson of the University of Bath published a study on refereeing. They concluded that referees in the Premier League awarded significantly more yellow and red cards to visiting players than to members of the home team.

This result confirmed an earlier psychological study conducted by scientists at the University of Wolverhampton and Liverpool John Moores University, who found that referees were influenced by crowd noise when calling fouls. Referees watching taped matches made fewer calls against the home team, and more against the visitors, when the sound was turned on. But more experienced referees were less likely to favor the home team.

That last discovery could be crucial in explaining why a small team like Fulham, which plays in a stadium that could be characterized as friendly, has a big home advantage. On any given weekend, the most experienced referees in England are usually handling the games involving the most powerful teams. In the meantime, little Fulham’s fans can make their presence known to the novices who go to the Cottage, and reap the benefits. New York Times