21.74 – A Good Start (Pt 2 of 2) – Post 46

So we come to the first 10 games of the season. Now, as you’d expect, we cover about 50% of old ground here, but the two tables, at top and bottom, are far more revelatory of the seasons to come as, I guess, the better teams and weaker teams schedules ‘even out’ towards Christmas. By the end of 10 games, you’d expect a team to have gathered 21.74% of their points tally and, as before, the teams that are heading for promotion haven’t quite achieved that

ratio, and the ones that are heading for the drop haven’t quite fallen that far but, by 10 games, the gaps between the two are far closer which means that you’ve got a lot better idea by 10 games – particularly in seasons when there isn’t one team running away with it – of where you’ll end up.

So, looking at the table here you see that there’s only one season as before that the promoted teams were moving quicker than the average rate once (that – first – year that Leeds went postal and then collapsed) but the other four seasons has seen the top teams picking up on their first five games performance, but not quite looking like guaranteed promotion form (I find it strange

that the last two seasons have been the same, but that’s just me), a table that is repeated, in reverse, in the relegated teams table. The four fallers in 2006/07 fell away badly, as we’ve seen from the five game table, but other than that, they’ve not been far off the mark you’d expect – 24.55 is only around 3% above 21.74, and, as a secondary caveat to these teams, its also worth bearing in mind that a lot of these teams were recently promoted, so their early season form – particularly at home – is generally better than one would anticipate (or, in the case of Gillingham is 2009/10, is just good over the whole season).

What have we learned from these two posts, then?

Five games is still to early to draw any conclusions for the season, but by 10 games, the better teams will be beginning to show at the top part of the league, just as the weaker teams will be around the bottom somewhere.

Incidentally, I used the teams that got relegated for this chart, rather than those who gathered fewest points – Plymouth, notably, last season, skewed the figures a little, but only a little, with their creditable start.

10.89 – A Good Start (Pt 1 of 2) – Post 45

“I’m not going to look at the league table until 10 games in. Nothing’s really happened until then, and you can never tell after one game where anyone’s going to end up”

Well, now. Well, now. Is that the case? Remember Southampton’s slow start last season? Remember that Millwall were crippled by injuries and had to surge through. Remember also that Leeds were many points clear before their collapse, and Brighton were top of the league from very early on. So does that make a difference.

I’m going to take the answer to this in two parts and owe Jonathan Wilson (@jonawils) a massive debt of gratitude for the tools to solve this particular puzzle. I’m going to work with the seasons from 2006/07 to last year (five seasons, and fifteen promoted teams) to seek my answers, and hope to come to a conclusion.

How important is a good start? After 5 games, what sort of indication did we have that teams were going to prosper, or flounder? Mr Wilson worked his tallies out by comparing actual points tallies (% of final points totals) with the expected points percentages if they were gathered evenly throughout the season. I saw no reason to mess with his formula, though obviously, my sights were set a little lower than the top of the Premiership and my numbers a little more difficult to pin down.

As it happens, I was a little surprised by what I found – the variety was large but, by and large, the expected points tally (10.87%) was nowhere near matched, except in 2009/10, when Leeds’ start swept all before them, and led to the three

promoted sides gathering 10.90% of their total tallies in the first five games (as near as damn an average figure as you’re likely to find).

The other four seasons saw the promoted teams doing a bit of struggling while things levelled themselves out, from only 13 points (5.02%) in 2006/07 up to a more respectable 8.65% in 2010/11 – while Southampton dallied, Brighton and Peterborough’s houses got into order pretty quickly.

This can only help to illustrate that the extreme beginning of the season is really no indication at all of where teams will finish, as can checking what was happening with those teams who were going to drop out of the division in May, those four unfortunates. Well, I thought this was going to prove to be an opposite story at first, but it seems that Brentford’s glorious start and collapse was something of an anomaly, matched by the decent starts of

Bradford, Chesterfield and Rotherham to create the illusion that a good start generally meant a bad end to the season. Of course, as we’ve seen above, there’s a distinct regression to the mean with these early games, and the first five seem to go out of their way to prove that – 18.44% of their total tallies that the 2006/07 relegation vintage had gathered is almost double the rest of the tallies, and explains why the average figure (11.36%) is a touch over the 10.87% we’d expect if the games were equal across the season. The fact is, though, that 11.36% is a good deal higher than 7.60%, which indicates one thing very clearly – teams start a lot more evenly than they finish. The promoted teams gathered 100 point between 15 of them, while the relegated teams gathered the same figure amongst 20 – not a massive difference between 5 points and 6.67 points at the time, but that difference comes to translate into a lot at the end of the season – it would work out at a difference between 54 and 72 points, which is sizeable indeed.

Town then, don’t need to worry if they don’t set the world on fire at the start of the season. As we discovered last year, the best work is done after Christmas.

Next time, I see if 10 games into the season is more revelatory.

2.385 – Half A Season Of Insanity (Pt 1) – Post 28

Apologies for the delay in getting the post out, but I needed a couple of things to happen first; Town’s game at Brighton, and my completion of a spreadsheet with every Football League season (team-by-team, year-by-year – 8448 individual club seasons).

But now both are completed, and I can look back at the numbers.

I’ve divided the season into two parts, and (happily) will be focusing mainly on the second half, as that’s where most of the ‘insanity’ of the title has occurred. Town started 2011 in third position, remember, with Southampton having passed them by virtue of that 4-1 victory at St Mary’s. It is well documented that since then, 24 games, Town are unbeaten.

As it happens, Town’s performance since then has been nothing short of remarkable. There is, however, a problem. Southampton’s performance has been more remarkable.

Note the amount of first place finishers in the above table (I just pulled one team either side of the three for illustrative purposes); indeed, only once has a team with as high a projected figure of points finished 3rd, and that was some 106 years ago when Liverpool and Bolton pipped Manchester United in the 2nd Division (1904/05 – over a 34 game season) – the next 3rd place team is from the Premiership, for two years on the bounce, in the forms of Arsenal 2007/08 and Chelsea 2008/09 – both on 100 projected points.

This is all fine, and this is all dandy, but it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to note that Town’s away record stacks up with the best of them. Well, funny I should mention that, because it does. Check out this table. Firstly, forget your surprise about the Doncaster team of 1946/47 – they were one hell of a team. The final column is a Points Per Away Game (3 for a win – though the positions remain pretty similar for 2 – MK Dons drop a couple of places) and Town’s 2011 run puts them clear sixth overall – between the first Liverpool team to win promotion and the great Invincible Preston team of 1888-89 (nobody has EVER had a better season than theirs – its been downhill all the way).

This post is the first of a number I intend to produce towards the end of the season, but however I look at it, the runs of Brighton, Southampton and Huddersfield are truly, truly astounding this calendar year.

14 – What Does The Future Hold? – Post 22

More thoughts on the battle for second here, largely brought about by – strangely – Norwich’s 6-0 victory yesterday, as well as Leeds’ dominant 2nd half show against Forest, and Millwall looking ominous in typical late-season Millwall fashion.

I was wondering if there was any correlation between the finishing position in Division 3/League One, and how well the teams do the season afterwards – given the battle for 2nd that is going on currently – how important it has proved to be promoted automatically rather than through the playoffs. My initial thought was that there’d be a massive gap between Champions and Playoff Winners – not every year, but defined enough that we’d see something; that’s not entirely what we do see, though.

The average league position for a team getting promoted from 3rd tier to 2nd tier (since 1994/95, the last time Town did it) is 14th, on 56pts. Last time, they went up, Town out-performed that in terms of position 8th, and points, 63, but Birmingham, who were champions, finished 15th on 58 – there wasn’t a lot to choose there.

What do we see, then, writ over the 16 year period?

We see not a lot of gaps at all, to be honest

Champions of Tier 3 average – 12.5th place, 62 points
2nd in Tier 3 average – 15th place, 58 points
Playoff winners average – 15th place, 56 points.

So, you’re looking at a gap of – average – 2.5 places, and 6 points. Not a lot to call; so if it does come to Town being in the playoffs, it doesn’t necessarily mean disaster for next season. The more interesting feature of the teams who got promoted is that four out of the five teams who ended up relegated from Tier 2 were Champions the year before – maybe teams who had it ‘too easy’ when winning the title, and didn’t need to strengthen; though the examples of Leicester and Norwich would point against it. For the record – two teams have been promoted straight away – one were Champions (Watford – through the playoffs) and one went through the playoffs (Manchester City – finished 2nd, which is where Norwich sit currently)

In short, then, there are generally enough bad teams in the division above to help those who get promoted from Tier 3 settle in the division above, however they manage to do it, but there’s a suspicious number of Champions get relegated.

There’s some interesting teams, by the way, gone up in the last 15 years; Luton, Grimsby and Oxford have all been out of the league since; Stockport look likely to join them. Birmingham, Manchester City, Fulham and Blackpool are all in the top flight now – QPR look likely to join them. Its an interesting group.

Incidentally, in no way do I assume Town will be promoted, I just wondered what might happen should it occur.