No sweet home: Is 'home advantage' fading?
The Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, The Athletic FC Tactics podcast dive into the world of home and away - discussing the tactical differences between performing in front of your own fans, and taking to the road.
What are the key elements to playing on home turf, and how does it impact what happens on the pitch?
Host: Michael Bailey
With: Michael Cox, Mark Carey and Liam Tharme
Producer: Mike Stavrou
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Research article: Revising home advantage in sport – home advantage mediation (HAM) model
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic FC |
| 0:03.1 | Hello and welcome to the Athletic Fc tactics podcast. |
| 0:18.2 | I'm Michael Bailey. |
| 0:19.1 | This week we're diving into the world of home and away. |
| 0:22.8 | No, not the hugely popular Australian TV soap set in Summer Bay, but the tactical differences |
| 0:27.7 | between performing in front of your own fans and taking to the road. What are the key elements |
| 0:33.2 | to playing on home turf and how does it impact what happens on the pitch. Let's find out for this |
| 0:39.1 | one. We have Liam Tham. Hello, Michael. Michael Cox. Hi Michael. And Mark Carey. Hi Michael. |
| 0:45.9 | Hello all. This week's episode was inspired by you guys. Robbie got in touch via our email address |
| 0:52.0 | tactics pod at theathletic.com to write, I heard about Spurs' |
| 0:56.5 | terrible home record in the last year or so, and then someone referenced how Everton |
| 1:01.0 | are doing better away than at home this season. What happens to home advantage when |
| 1:05.8 | teams move stadiums, but also potentially a wider discussion is why home advantage is an advantage and when it isn't. |
| 1:14.2 | Thank you, Robbie, for the great starting point. |
| 1:16.4 | Let's do some fact checking first before we talk theories. |
| 1:20.4 | Michael, how does Tottenham's home record rank in the pantheon of teams being rubbish in their own stadium? |
| 1:26.9 | Yes, pretty bad. Robbie mentions over the last year, I've just looked at this season. So far, they've won only 33% of their points at home. Now, we're midway through this season, so a relatively small sample size. But it's, I mean, it would be on course to be up there with the worst. So the worst or the lowest, I should say, |
| 1:45.5 | because you could say it's the best percentage of waypoints, I suppose. |
| 1:48.6 | The lowest percentage of points won at home. |
| 1:51.3 | In the Premier League era, it was actually last season. |
| 1:53.4 | Ipswich only won once at home all season, |
| 1:56.5 | curiously against Chelsea with a golden assist from Liam DeLap, |
... |
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