Correlation FC

Who won? Using data to understand who won the game

For any given game, it's pretty easy to tell who won the game just by looking at the final score. There are, of course, three possible outcomes in the Premier League - win, loss or draw.

Over the course of the 2025-26 season, we are going to produce a multi-part series of articles that will use data from Brentford's first 4 Premier League seasons to try to answer the simple question – who won? Wikipedia informs me that this type of exploration is called retrodiction, which is "the act of making a prediction about the past". As any casual investor will be aware, past performance is not an indication of future results, so don't think of this as a crystal ball into the future and definitely don't try to use this information for gambling purposes.

This exploration will look at a few different types of data including recent performance (form), goals scored, expected goals and league position.

Was there a winner?

We will begin with a very basic, but important question. How often do games end up with a winner?

Premier League game win rate from 2021/22 to 2024/25 (source FBref.com)

Season	Total matches	Wins	Draws	Win percentage	Draw percentage
2021-22	380	292	88	76.8%	23.2%
2022-23	380	293	87	77.1%	22.9%
2023-24	380	298	82	78.4%	21.6%
2024-25	380	287	93	75.5%	24.5%
Average	-	-	-	77.0%	23.0%

While the numbers vary slightly from year to year, most games finish with a winner. The majority in fact – 3 out of 4. So, if you've watched a Premier League game in the past four years, it is most likely that somebody won. That's positive. Those wins will make up the key findings for us. However, those pesky draws do add an interesting wrinkle that fans (or retrodictors) of many other sports don't need to worry about.

Is there a home field advantage?

Next we look to see if playing at home is advantageous. Intuitively we believe that it is, but is it really a thing? Let's take a look.

Win rates for home teams in the Premier League from 2021/22 to 2024/25 (source FBref.com)

Season	Total matches	Home wins	Draws	Away wins	Home win percentage	Draw percentage	Away win percentage
2021-22	380	163	88	129	42.9%	23.2%	33.9%
2022-23	380	184	87	109	48.4%	22.9%	28.7%
2023-24	380	175	82	123	46.1%	21.6%	32.4%
2024-25	380	155	93	132	40.8%	24.5%	34.7%
Average					44.5%	23.0%	32.4%

Here we see even more fluctuation from season to season, but the most likely outcome is a home win, even if it is coming at a somewhat unsatisfying rate of less than 50%, though perhaps it is some consolation that the visiting team only wins about one third of the time.

What does this mean?

So far we've seen that there will most likely be a winner, and it will most likely be the home team. No major surprises yet. So where do we go from here? To explore more data, of course.

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Over the course of the coming season, we will continue to address the question of "who won" by looking at form, relative league position, goals scored, expected goals and more. We hope that you'll come back to enjoy those stories when they're ready.

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