What home advantage?

Being of a suitably anorak-y disposition, I'm always attracted to interesting trivia, coincidences and statistics on sport.

For instance, much has been said since last weekend in relation to Arsenal striker Eduardo da Silva and the horrible injury he suffered at Birmingham. But did you know that he also holds the distinction of being the scorer of the first ever competitive goal at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium at the beginning of last season? The only thing is, he did it while playing for Dinamo Zagreb ...

Anyway, that's not the little fact I wanted to share here. That would be this, for which I have to thank Bill Edgar of the Times who recently highlighted this in his regular slot on The Game podcast:

Much has been said over the years about the reasons for teams enjoying a significant advantage when playing at home: vocal crowd support, familiarity with the surroundings, lack of travel fatigue and so on. And, statistically, 'home advantage' is an established fact in every sport known. For instance, if you look at the results in every division of English football since the Football League began - that's a sample size approaching 400 - there has never been a season where there have been more away wins than home wins in any division.

Until now, that is.

As of today, with 390 of 552 fixtures (71%) already played in England's League Two - there have been 19 more away wins than home ones.

Why? I have no idea. But the fact is that 13 of the division's 24 teams - including the top three and five of the bottom eight - have won more games on their travels than they have in their own back yard.

If the trend continues - and there is no reason to suppose it won't - we will have borne witness to one of the most anomalous and gloriously trivial seasons in football history.

Now that's got to be worthy of a pub quiz question or two in the future ...