Home and away: where the next Premier League scorigami will come from

The classic count has stalled

The classic scorigami treats 3–1 and 1–3 as the same result. By that measure the Premier League has produced 36 scorelines, and the last new one was West Brom 5–5 Manchester United on 19 May 2013. In the 4,990 matches since, every final score has been one the league had already seen.

Home advantage shapes the grid

Split every result by venue and those 36 scorelines become 60: 30 kinds of home win, 24 kinds of away win and 6 draws. Home teams have won 45.6% of Premier League matches and away teams 28.7%, so the away side of the grid fills far more slowly. Home sides average 1.53 goals a game to the away side's 1.16, and they have won by five goals or more 197 times, against 70 for away teams. That leaves more empty squares within reach on the away side, and it is why new results keep appearing there.

The season without crowds

One season breaks the pattern. 2020/21, played almost entirely behind closed doors, is the only Premier League season in which away teams won more matches than home teams: 153 away wins to 144 home wins, with away sides taking 40.3% of results against a long-run 28.7%. One of the new scorigamis, Crystal Palace 0–7 Liverpool, came that December. With home advantage back, the away side of the grid has gone back to filling slowly.

The new scorigamis

Since the classic count stopped moving, four home/away results have happened for the first time:

• Cardiff City 3–6 Liverpool, 22 March 2014: the first away 6–3.
• Southampton 0–9 Leicester City, 25 October 2019: the biggest away win in Premier League history.
• Crystal Palace 0–7 Liverpool, 19 December 2020.
• Sheffield United 0–8 Newcastle, 24 September 2023: the most recent scorigami of any kind.

Liverpool, fittingly, won away in two of them.

What could come next

The best candidates are away results whose home mirror image has already happened. An away 7–2 win is the likeliest: it has never happened, while 7–2 has been a home result five times (Blackburn v Sheffield Wednesday in 1997, Tottenham v Southampton in 2000, Chelsea v Sunderland in 2010, Manchester City v Stoke in 2017 and Aston Villa v Liverpool in 2020). Five more away scorelines have never happened although their home versions each have once: 4–7, 4–6, 1–9, 2–8 and 3–7.

Draws are the other frontier. Only one draw has produced more than eight goals (5–5, once), and 4–4 has happened 18 times, so a 6–6 would be a genuine first.

When one does happen, @pl_gami posts a home/away scorigami alert within minutes of full time, and the square lights up on the grid. For how the grid works, start with what a scorigami is.