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The Value of Head to Heads (Part 1)
by Footy4Cast

Whether or not the usage of head to head statistics ( HTH's ) are of paramount importance to you when choosing a given pick, the fact remains that the usage of these statistics is deeply ingrained in the psyche of many of the on-line soccer betting community.However, are we correct to place such emphasis on HTH's ? Is there really any correlation between a team having a good record against their opponents in previous games and an increased likelihood of them winning their next encounter? Footy4cast upsets the wife once more to bring you the results of literally hours of study to bring you the following analysis.

A Long Journey - But we got There in the End ?!

To assess whether their was a positive correlation between good HTH's and a high percentage of wins in the next game, Footy4cast looked at all the HTH records of all the teams in six major European leagues ( English Premier, Spanish La Liga, Italian Serie A, French Le Campionnat and Portuguese 1 ).. The only stipulation was that the home team had hosted their opponents at least 6 times between 1992 and 2001/02. ( Please note that this study is only in relation to the HTH's stats for home teams ). To gauge performance of the home teams against their various opposition, a % of points was calculated in the following format. For instance :- Man Utd v Aston Villa ( example only ) = WWWWDLWWWD. The total points that Man Utd acquired from these 10 games ( 1992 to 2001/02 ) was 23. This was then divided by 10 to give an average total of 2.30. A % HTH performance rating was then found by dividing 2.30 by 3 to give 76.66%.. This percentage figure was acquired for the home HTH performance of every combination of teams in each division.

Once this task was completed ( and my wife filed for divorce !!! ) all the matches were grouped according to the following ranges of performance 00-20%, 21-40%,41-60%,61-80% and 81-100%. Footy4cast then looked at the result of all the matches within these ranges in the 2002/03 season, to see how well the home team performed. Obviously, if there is justification for using HTH's in our selection criteria, then we should see high percentages of home wins in 2002/03 for head to matches which showed high HTH performance ratings ( between 1992 & 2001/02 ).

The Results

Whilst the results are some way off producing a positive correlation which would be justifiable in relation to a scientific experiment, they do show the following :-

Home H2H % 1992 - 2001/02	Home wins in 2002/03
0-20%	26.66%
21-40%	30.99%
41-60%	46.88%
61-80%	54.34%
81-100%	74.05%

As you can see from the results above, the percentage of home wins achieved in 2002/03 definitely rises as the HTH performance ratings ( ranges ) also rises. Surely if head to heads should be excluded entirely from our selection criteria then there would be absolutely no steady rises in 2002/03 home win percentages - head to heads then IMO are a must for inclusion in your selection criteria.

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