Football comparison tables

This is just a quick idea I had when doing the historical league positions page. The idea is that two teams are often compared on head-to-head record, but not (that I have seen) on their respective records against the other teams in the division. Cross-tables are close, but too busy and always show all teams.

To try it out, use the table below. The top part of the box is the home result and the bottom part is the away result. For instance: as Burnley drew with Bolton at home and lost away, their Bolton row is: .

This makes it easy to see that (for instance) Birmingham didn’t win once against the teams above them, but drew with all of them at home except Aston Villa. Blackburn, who finished on the same points, beat Tottenham once and Aston Villa twice, but struggled to win away from home against the bottom seven.

#	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Chelsea	38	27	5	6	103	32	86
2	Manchester United	38	27	4	7	86	28	85
3	Arsenal	38	23	6	9	83	41	75
4	Tottenham Hotspur	38	21	7	10	67	41	70
5	Manchester City	38	18	13	7	73	45	67
6	Aston Villa	38	17	13	8	52	39	64
7	Liverpool	38	18	9	11	61	35	63
8	Everton	38	16	13	9	60	49	61
9	Birmingham City	38	13	11	14	38	47	50
10	Blackburn Rovers	38	13	11	14	41	55	50
11	Stoke City	38	11	14	13	34	48	47
12	Fulham	38	12	10	16	39	46	46
13	Sunderland	38	11	11	16	48	56	44
14	Bolton Wanderers	38	10	9	19	42	67	39
15	Wolverhampton Wanderers	38	9	11	18	32	56	38
16	Wigan Athletic	38	9	9	20	37	79	36
17	West Ham United	38	8	11	19	47	66	35
18	Burnley	38	8	6	24	42	82	30
19	Hull City	38	6	12	20	34	75	30
20	Portsmouth	38	7	7	24	34	66	19

Postscript: data on professional football is not free, not by a long shot. This page is a mock-up, not a complete tool, using the results from the 2009-10 Premiership season as provided by the RSSSF. There isn’t a whole lot there, but the source is available on GitHub at smcgivern/football-comparison-tables.