Matchweek 4 came within one result of making history. Leeds’ 4–1 win over Newcastle was the only home victory of the round. Without it, the Premier League would have had its first full round without a home win since September 2000.

By the end of matchweek 5, home sides had won just 36% of games. Opta Analyst said that was the lowest in Premier League history at that stage. Last weekend’s five home wins nudged the figure back up to 38.3%. One number is still a record, though: almost a third of all games, 31.7%, have finished level.

So where have the home wins gone, and what do this season’s team sheets tell us?

The Numbers So Far

After 60 games, the 2026/27 Premier League reads 23 home wins, 19 draws and 18 away wins. Here is how that compares with recent seasons:

Four of the six lowest home-win rates in Premier League history have come this decade.

There is a catch. Comparing six matchweeks with full seasons flatters the “record”. After the same 50 games, 2015/16 (32%), 2020/21 (34%) and 2024/25 (34%) were all lower than this season, and two of those three recovered well above 40% by May.

Home Wins Are Becoming Draws, Not Away Wins

The detail that stands out is where the missing wins have gone. Away wins are running at 30%, in line with recent seasons. The difference is almost entirely draws.

Opta points to teams failing to hold leads. Sides that score first have won only 64.4% of those games. The underlying numbers back this up:

• Shots: home teams are averaging 14.4 a game against 13.2 for visitors. That gap of 1.2 is the smallest in 12 seasons; it normally sits between 2.3 and 3.2.
• Expected goals (xG): Understat has home sides on 1.70 a game and away sides on 1.60, the narrowest gap since 2019/20.
• Discipline: away teams are still picking up more yellow cards, 2.15 a game against 1.72. Refereeing doesn’t seem to be what’s tipping the balance.

In other words, home teams aren’t being outplayed. They just aren’t creating enough extra to see games out.

What the Team Sheets Suggest

This was always going to be an unusual season for line-ups. Nine clubs changed manager over the summer, the most managers making their league debuts on opening weekend since 1946/47, according to Opta. Their home record so far is telling: those nine clubs have won 33% of their home games, against 42% for the rest of the league. The samples are small (27 and 33 games), but the gap fits the idea that new structures take time to settle.

Newly promoted Coventry, Ipswich and Hull have won 44% of their home games. That’s slightly better than the established clubs with new managers.

The calendar hasn’t helped either. Only around 33 days separated the World Cup final on 19 July from the Premier League’s opening weekend. A merged 16-day international window followed after matchweek 5.

A Premier League Problem

It’s worth checking whether this is happening everywhere. It isn’t.

The Championship’s draw rate (29.9%) is high too. But Europe’s other top leagues are seeing home sides win at close to their usual rates, which suggests something specific to the Premier League this season.

Why Home Advantage Has Been Shrinking for Years

The longer trend is well documented. Richard Pollard’s research on English football found home advantage had been falling for decades, with travel and familiarity explaining more of it than crowds. Peeters and van Ours found the same substantial decline across English league football from 1974 to 2018.

The empty-stadium seasons gave researchers a rare natural experiment. A 2021 study by Wunderlich and colleagues covered more than 1,000 games played without fans. The extra fouls and cards that away teams normally receive disappeared, but home advantage shrank rather than vanished. The authors concluded crowds were “not the main driving factor”.

VAR’s role is less clear. One study of the Bundesliga found home advantage was no longer detectable after its introduction. A wider study of 16 leagues found “negligible” effects.

Other explanations include more uniform pitches, easier travel and new stadiums that feel less intimidating than the grounds they replaced.

What the Market Has Priced In

Bookmakers didn’t miss the trend. Once the margin is stripped out, average odds this season have implied the following:

The market’s implied home-win rate was already the lowest of any of the last 12 seasons apart from 2020/21, so prices had already allowed for a smaller home edge. Where the market has been caught out is draws. Backing every draw at average odds would have returned around 23% over the first 60 games. That says more about a small sample than it does about a strategy.

If you’re comparing draw prices before the weekend, it’s worth checking the odds across several UK-licensed bookmakers rather than relying on one. Different gambling brands aren’t necessarily independent of one another, either. The casino market offers an example: True Fortune sister sites are connected through a shared affiliate network, although that doesn’t necessarily mean identical legal ownership. It’s a different market from football betting, but the distinction between comparing brands and comparing operators is worth understanding.

The statistics also urge caution. Against a long-run home-win rate of about 45%, 23 wins from 60 games is well within normal variation: a 95% range runs from roughly 27% to 51%. When fans were locked out in 2020, Joseph Buchdahl’s analysis for Pinnacle showed bookmakers adjusted their home prices quickly. There’s little reason to think they will be any slower now.

Sixty games is a small sample, and history suggests home wins will drift back towards normal as the season goes on. But if home managers keep naming cautious line-ups and failing to protect leads, the team sheets will show it long before the table does.

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