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[Zatman]

yeah its not a hostile place Villa Park, its like going to a hotel. Its a Champions League Stadium without the team

 

 

btw wouldnt call Anfield intimidating unless its a " big european night"

[PaulC]

yeah its not a hostile place Villa Park, its like going to a hotel. Its a Champions League Stadium without the team

 

 

btw wouldnt call Anfield intimidating unless its a " big european night"

 

Or even Old Trafford

[SikhInTrinity]

yeah its not a hostile place Villa Park, its like going to a hotel. Its a Champions League Stadium without the team

 

 

btw wouldnt call Anfield intimidating unless its a " big european night"

 

I mean as in the history, the stadium, its tight and can be hostile. They have their own way of making it intimidating. VP is just too pleasant, but I'd also say one thing we lack is a leader at VP, someone who the fans can relate too, like Laursen/Mellberg. I look at that pitch and I see no-one who gives us that.

Edited October 29, 2013 by SikhInTrinity

[Mantis]

I think psychology must come into it somewhere. Not only are our away results better but the performances are too. There's no way playing style alone accounts for this massive difference between home and away form.

Edited October 29, 2013 by Mantis

[Rovers13]

I always used to be from the school of thought that teams shouldn't perform differently away from home than they do at home. I thought that if you're a pro athlete it takes a lot of mental toughness to get to that point, and people making noise shouldn't really affect your performance that much, it just showed a lack of mental toughness.

 

I guess other people had the same thought, so they looked at why teams actually perform worse on the road than they do at home. One thing they found is that teams have had a similar advantage at home across all levels of all sports in North America. This flies in the face of the idea that crowd noise is the main thing, because obviously there are bigger crowds at the highest levels, so if the main influence was crowd noise, the advantage would be larger at those levels than say, at high school soccer.

 

Two main ideas have come up as to why the performance actually changes on the road. The first is refereeing. The study about this I read looked across a few different North American leagues and found that refs called more fouls on road teams than they did against home teams over the course of a few seasons. This brings up a chicken or the egg argument, however. Are refs influenced by the social pressures of home crowds, and therefore homefield advantage comes from slightly unconscious bias from the ref, or is it because teams just perform better at home, so they're more likely to get calls in their favor because they're committing less fouls?

 

The other idea, and the one I think is more persuasive, is that environmental familiarity aids the home team. This doesn't just mean the weather, or the alititude, but alsogetting used to a different field, a completely different backdrop, and different surroundings. This hypothesis is backed up by a couple interesting points. One is that in major American leagues, matchups between teams in the same division (so teams that play more often) have less home field advantage than matchups between teams that play less frequently. Usually these games are more intense, so if crowd noise was such a huge cause, they'd be expected to have a greater advantage for the home team, not less.

 

Another point is that according to the study, home teams have a greater advantage in the first half or first part of games than they do as the game goes on. So as visiting teams get used to their surroundings, they settle in more and perform bettter.

 

In reality it's probably a combo, crowd noise probably does somewhat have an effect, both on players and referees, but players not being used to the environment probably is a big factor.

 

What does all this mean for Villa's home form? I don't really know, but blaming a lack of crowd support might be a bit off. Personally, I think it's probably the counter attacking style, but for a different reason than others think. I think it makes Villa less likely to score early, which is when home field has the most advantage, and the longer the game goes scoreless, the more comfortable the road team gets. Obviously you can't make assumptions about home field off one game and there's plenty of games where the home side is better in the second half than the first, but Everton might be the perfect example. Villa started really well and created good chances and on another day might've taken them, but didn't so Everton grew more comfortable and eventually started to outplay Villa. 

[StefanAVFC]

The Seahawks haven't lost at home in 2 seasons. I think home field is more of a big deal of NFL though.

[Rovers13]

The Seahawks haven't lost at home in 2 seasons. I think home field is more of a big deal of NFL though.

I know people hate what ifs, but there was a Hail Mary that Green Bay intercepted and the replacement refs screwed up the call. If they didn't, Green Bay would've won and Seattle would be 10-1 vs 7-6 on the road, only a 3 game difference. Plus a playoff road win.

[StefanAVFC]

I don't doubt that we're not a bad road team either, but home field is huge in the NFL. That's the point I was making.

 

But that's more to do with the crowd actually having an impact on the game than in football.

[Rovers13]

I don't doubt that we're not a bad road team either, but home field is huge in the NFL. That's the point I was making.

 

But that's more to do with the crowd actually having an impact on the game than in football.

I was trying to procrastinate something so I calculated the last two seasons in the NFL and the prem. In 2012 in the NFL the home team won 57.2% of the decisions (I didn't include the tie). In the premier league, the home team won 61% of the decisions ( once again, no draws because its a neutral result). So its very similar in both leagues, but the premier actually showed more of a home field advantage than the NFL. I think if you do most leagues in different sports you'd get that same high 50s to low 60s area.

[Zatman]

difference with NFL is the travel is a lot longer for games, probably easier to compare home and away records for Champions League teams instead of Premier League teams for example

[Kwan]

Home field isn't as important in the NFL. Everything is the same save for some difference in turf, crowds aren't as involved. Seattle is a bit of an exception because what else is there to do in Seattle

But I think we will best Cardiff and Sunderland by more than one goal

Edited October 30, 2013 by Kwan

[StefanAVFC]

Home field isn't as important in the NFL. Everything is the same save for some difference in turf, crowds aren't as involved. Seattle is a bit of an exception because what else is there to do in Seattle

But I think we will best Cardiff and Sunderland by more than one goal

 

What? When you're at home, the crowd makes it harder for opposing offenses to hear. They isn't really that issue in football because there aren't the stoppages to talk about what you're going to do.

[Kwan]

Home field isn't as important in the NFL. Everything is the same save for some difference in turf, crowds aren't as involved. Seattle is a bit of an exception because what else is there to do in Seattle

But I think we will best Cardiff and Sunderland by more than one goal

What? When you're at home, the crowd makes it harder for opposing offenses to hear. They isn't really that issue in football because there aren't the stoppages to talk about what you're going to do.

That happens for about the first five minutes of the game. The effect is exaggerated

[StefanAVFC]

 

 

Home field isn't as important in the NFL. Everything is the same save for some difference in turf, crowds aren't as involved. Seattle is a bit of an exception because what else is there to do in Seattle

But I think we will best Cardiff and Sunderland by more than one goal

What? When you're at home, the crowd makes it harder for opposing offenses to hear. They isn't really that issue in football because there aren't the stoppages to talk about what you're going to do.

That happens for about the first five minutes of the game. The effect is exaggerated

 

 

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I've seen it disrupt a few offenses this year so far.

[KennyPowers]

I have to admit the biggest thing that annoys me at Villa Park is, say we're in the attacking third and someone tries to thread a difficult pass, it gets intercepted, a sizeable section of the crowd groans. I just think why are you groaning? It's a difficult pass, a low percentage pass, but if it comes off it has a good chance of creating a goalscoring opportunity, if you keep groaning none of the players will want to take responsibility for creating anything.

 

Contrast this with an incident against Spurs. Delph dribbles, just inside in his own half, in a circle around three players and then passes it backwards to the full-back and sizeable sections of the crowd applaud wildly (presumably for retaining possession). Now I don't want to pick on Delph here as the dribbling was kind-of impressive but if you're going to do it then do it in the opponents half when you can cause some damage, he could really have just passed the ball backwards at the start and avoided the dribbling (and the risk of losing the ball) completely.  

 

It's just a bit perverse the way the fans react when fairly simple high percentage passes get so much applause at times and attempting anything difficult attracts so many groans. To an extent it happens at most grounds but I think Villa Park is pretty bad for it. 

[Mantis]

Yeah I agree with that. I've noticed as well that if we're rolling the ball around in the centre of the pitch looking for an opening people get impatient and start groaning because we're not moving forward.

Edited October 30, 2013 by Mantis

[KennyPowers]

Yeah and there seem to be a lot of fans who like to see a player put his head down, dribble either towards goal or down the line and then shoot or cross without ever lifting their head. I guess it looks like they're trying hard and fans appreciate the effort.

[Dodgyknees]

I have to admit the biggest thing that annoys me at Villa Park is, say we're in the attacking third and someone tries to thread a difficult pass, it gets intercepted, a sizeable section of the crowd groans. I just think why are you groaning? It's a difficult pass, a low percentage pass, but if it comes off it has a good chance of creating a goalscoring opportunity, if you keep groaning none of the players will want to take responsibility for creating anything.

Contrast this with an incident against Spurs. Delph dribbles, just inside in his own half, in a circle around three players and then passes it backwards to the full-back and sizeable sections of the crowd applaud wildly (presumably for retaining possession). Now I don't want to pick on Delph here as the dribbling was kind-of impressive but if you're going to do it then do it in the opponents half when you can cause some damage, he could really have just passed the ball backwards at the start and avoided the dribbling (and the risk of losing the ball) completely.

It's just a bit perverse the way the fans react when fairly simple high percentage passes get so much applause at times and attempting anything difficult attracts so many groans. To an extent it happens at most grounds but I think Villa Park is pretty bad for it.

You should read The Secret Footballer, he covers this topic and the way fans see football.

[KennyPowers]

 

I have to admit the biggest thing that annoys me at Villa Park is, say we're in the attacking third and someone tries to thread a difficult pass, it gets intercepted, a sizeable section of the crowd groans. I just think why are you groaning? It's a difficult pass, a low percentage pass, but if it comes off it has a good chance of creating a goalscoring opportunity, if you keep groaning none of the players will want to take responsibility for creating anything.

Contrast this with an incident against Spurs. Delph dribbles, just inside in his own half, in a circle around three players and then passes it backwards to the full-back and sizeable sections of the crowd applaud wildly (presumably for retaining possession). Now I don't want to pick on Delph here as the dribbling was kind-of impressive but if you're going to do it then do it in the opponents half when you can cause some damage, he could really have just passed the ball backwards at the start and avoided the dribbling (and the risk of losing the ball) completely.

It's just a bit perverse the way the fans react when fairly simple high percentage passes get so much applause at times and attempting anything difficult attracts so many groans. To an extent it happens at most grounds but I think Villa Park is pretty bad for it.

You should read The Secret Footballer, he covers this topic and the way fans see football.

 

Did anyone ever find out who he was? 

[Dodgyknees]

I have to admit the biggest thing that annoys me at Villa Park is, say we're in the attacking third and someone tries to thread a difficult pass, it gets intercepted, a sizeable section of the crowd groans. I just think why are you groaning? It's a difficult pass, a low percentage pass, but if it comes off it has a good chance of creating a goalscoring opportunity, if you keep groaning none of the players will want to take responsibility for creating anything.

Contrast this with an incident against Spurs. Delph dribbles, just inside in his own half, in a circle around three players and then passes it backwards to the full-back and sizeable sections of the crowd applaud wildly (presumably for retaining possession). Now I don't want to pick on Delph here as the dribbling was kind-of impressive but if you're going to do it then do it in the opponents half when you can cause some damage, he could really have just passed the ball backwards at the start and avoided the dribbling (and the risk of losing the ball) completely.

It's just a bit perverse the way the fans react when fairly simple high percentage passes get so much applause at times and attempting anything difficult attracts so many groans. To an extent it happens at most grounds but I think Villa Park is pretty bad for it.

You should read The Secret Footballer, he covers this topic and the way fans see football.

Did anyone ever find out who he was?

no, I think Danny Murphy though.