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The Curse of the Saturday Early Kick-Off: Myth or Reality

A notable feature in English football that has now become a mainstay – 12:30 pm (GMT) Kick-off on Saturday, an occurrence that fans and pundits bemoan alike. While the late Saturday evening fixtures in the Premier League have been received by many as a welcomed innovation, the same cannot be said of the 12:30 pm kick-offs and its eerie feeling.

The Saturday 3pm kick-off time became the order of the weekend dating far back to 1850 when the British Factory Act was introduced. An Act passed a law that stopped companies from keeping employees any later than 2 pm on a Saturday, allowing workers more recreational time. Hence the footballing body thought 3pm was a suitable time to fit in football.

As football gained popularity and the professional leagues were created, Saturday 3pm KO remained a staple time for football, as it did not only comply with workers’ schedule, but it meant that it just caught the remaining daylight hours during the winter months.

This order of schedule remained until the 1960s and early 1970s when football became more profitable. Changes to kick-off times became apparent onwards. In a bid to accommodate the number of football games being televised, hence the idea of the early kick-offs.

At first, many teams welcomed the idea until it became a factor relative to their performance on the biggest European stages. 

For some teams – especially those in the murky waters of relegation, playing in the early kick-off serves as the perfect opportunity to put rivals under more pressure when they’re in action later on in the weekend, for big teams with European ambitions, the same cannot be said. “Lethargy” is the word used to greet these fixtures by managers of these teams.

Whilst it’s fair to say early kick-offs are now an accepted part of Premier League football, we are still keen to address the issue of the perceived level of sluggishness these early kick-off fixtures are met with amongst purists.

For many, the opinion of the early kick-offs being ‘a stick in the wheel’ of the top teams’ remains. With Liverpool’s recent 1-0 loss to basement side Bournemouth a recent example, this point is further bolstered by the fact title favourites Arsenal and Manchester City had their fair share of this supposed struggle. Lunchtime kick-offs were seemingly unkind to both teams as they were met with defeats to relegation-threatened Everton for the Gunners, and a loss at the Etihad to Thomas Frank’s Brentford. These results, which seemingly defied the odds at the time, appear to further strengthen this myth about the early kick-offs. On the contrary, it could also be perceived as any other fixture, irrespective of the timing. What remains to be unravelled is the never-ending and seemingly over-utilized excuse of timing/early kick-offs playing a huge part in the outcome of (shock) results. 

To effectively interpret this, we broke games down by the volume of goals scored into three broad categories spanning six seasons between 2015/16 to 2020/21; those played prior to 2:15pm, dubbing them as the early starts, those that kicked off at the traditional time of 3pm, and the late evening games beginning from 17:30pm.

Stat courtesy infogol.net

Ostensibly, there does appear to be a change in the total goals scored in games depending on the kick-off time. As opposed to being cagey and low scoring, the earlier games are the most goal-laden, followed closely by evening starts, with the traditional 3pm being the lowest scoring.

For a fixture timing many have dubbed to be slow, lethargic, boring, and low-scoring, the statistics say otherwise. According to Opta analysts, Saturday lunchtime kick-offs in the Premier League since the 2016-17 season have witnessed an average of 2.9 goals per game as against the expected 2.75 goals a number much higher in comparison to the 3 pm and 5:30 pm Saturday kick-off, which has averaged 2.6 goals against its projected 2.58 expected goals and 2.82 goals as against its expected 2.8 goals respectively.

The excitement of the early kick-offs even gets greater when you consider the number of expected assists and shots on target recorded in the fixtures set at this time in comparison to others (as shown in the graphic below).

The Saturday lunchtime games feature higher expected assists per game and shot on target per game at 1.71 and 8.9 respectively compared to the 3pm kick-offs which feature an expected assist of 1.62 and a shockingly low 8.21 shot on target per game, given the volume of the games scheduled for the 3pm kick-offs.

Further research carried out courtesy of talkSPORT over a ten-year period (2009 to 2019) gives credence to the school of thought that the early Premier League kick-offs have little effect on the big teams. The table below shows the 10 best teams with regards to win percentage in early kick-off fixtures.

Teams Win Percentage
1. Man City  70.70%
2. Chelsea 57.50%
3. Man Utd  52.20%
4. Brighton 50%
5. Liverpool 47.60%
5. Arsenal  47.60%
7. West Ham 44%
8. Southampton 41.70%
9. Tottenham 39.60%
10. Crystal Palace 38.50%

Judging by the aforementioned statistics viewed, it is safe to say that asides from the aesthetics that come with playing football ‘under the lights’– a feature that naturally increases the attention of any fixture, the timing of the games don’t affect the outcome and performance of teams. Whilst the ‘big 6’ teams in English football may not enjoy the early kick-offs for its logical inconvenience to their busy schedules, they certainly can’t accuse these fixtures of being that ‘stick in the wheel’ for their team as the data shows that not only is it a weak excuse for their team exhibiting lethargy, but also historically these teams still tend to triumph irrespective of the ‘bogey’ feeling in these early kick-off games.

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