Championship playoffs: basic stats............ninth time lucky ?

Jul 24, 2020

Championship playoffs :

Schedule:

Semi-Finals:

26/07 Swansea City- Brentford

29/07 Brentford- Swansea City

27/07 Cardiff City -Fulham

30/07 Fulham -Cardiff City

Final: Wembley August 4th

Last 14 seasons: The third placed team has won seven times (50%), 4th twice, 5th four times, the team finishing in sixth just once and not for the last nine seasons.

In terms of h2h round robin (games between the four teams this season): Brentford 16 points, Fulham 10 points, Swansea City 4 points, Cardiff City 3 points. The Bees won 5 of the six, only coming up short in a 2-2 draw away to Cardiff where they led 2-0 , winning the two games with Swansea by a combined 6-1.

Points picked up over the second half of the season : Brentford 44 (+7), Fulham 43 (+5), Cardiff 40 (+7), Swansea 33 (-4). Figures in parenthesis are the difference between second 23 and first 23 games.

Seasonal ITB : Brentford +188, Fulham +18, Cardiff -17, Swansea -51.

xP for the season: Brentford 101 , Fulham 72, Swansea 65, Cardiff 56. That is a +20 point swing for the Bees over the "real" table, Fulham (-9), Swansea (-5) and Cardiff (-17) all going the other way and picking up more points than they should have done.

Playoff experience is not to be underestimated and Fulham are taking part for the third time in four seasons, winning in 17-18 . Brentford took part in the 2014-15 Championship playoffs, the other two have no recent post season .

Ninth time lucky ? Brentford have actually participated in eight playoffs previously, the other seven at a lower level and are yet to win one !

With such a huge prize at stake these games tend to be close , very tense affairs and many teams make avoiding defeat in the opener a priority. That is borne out by how few semi final first leg home winners there are, only 7 in those last 14 seasons, which is 28 games, a miserly 25% , which equates to odds of 4.0, 17 (60.71%) were level after 45 minutes.

Fulham had a very easy win over Cardiff at Craven Cottage just two weeks ago , it was 2-0 but the winning margin might easily have been doubled and you do suspect they would be happy to go back to London all square and they have already drawn at the Cardiff City Stadium this season.

Brentford blew a big chance for automatic promotion in the final week of the regular season, it is hard to put your finger on exactly why, but they were sub par over those last two games, having said that, they had won eight in a row prior to that and just take a look at those ITB and xP numbers , they were not only head and shoulders but also torso above the other three playoff contenders and that goes double when we look at the h2h records. One or two players looked tired in those last two games and we have to be honest and say that the pressure also probably got to them, but Leeds United aside, I do not think there is a team in the Championship who can beat them across two legs and Swansea have a lot to overcome, that 6th place "jinx", losing 6-1 on aggregate over the two league games, a "joke" -239 ITB differential and similar 36 points in favour of the Bees on xP.

It is hard to say Brentford are great value at 2.50 to win the playoffs , that looks more than fair if you look at the base numbers, but the truth is they now need a performance and to show that they have got over the disappointment of the last 7-8 days.

Glossary:

ITB= inside the box attempts, Goal of the month competitions usually feature several long range contenders and we always remember those 30 yard bullets into the top corner, but only 12.87% of Premier League goals over the last three seasons have been scored from outside the box , good coaches are known to encourage players to look for better scoring opportunities and it is usually only supporters urging "shoooooot" everytime the goal is within sight, even if there are 20 players between ball and net .

XG= expected goals.

XGF= expected goals for.

XGA = expected goals against.

XGD = expected goal difference.

XP = expected points.

BC = big scoring chance.

Good luck !