Lincoln City won’t win League Two this season according to the full season simulation from website footstats.co.uk.
The popular stats website is used by gamblers to predicts things such as both teams to score and possible outcomes of games. it takes shot data, form and other statistics to produce a suggestion for matches every weekend.
It can also be used to predict the results of every game for the rest of the season, calculating the final league table. whilst I appreciate many of you will scoff at this sort of thing, there is some interesting discussion points.
Firstly, the current League Two simulation doesn’t have Lincoln at the summit come May, despite being four points clear at present. They’re predicting MK Dons to be the Champions, a side currently seven points behind us. The site predicts they’ll end up around the 86 point mark, three ahead of their nearest challengers.
The good news is we’re currently showing in second place, a position few would bemoan come the end of the season. We’re predicting 83 points, which means there just 50 out there for us from the remaining 33 matches. As we average 1.79 since getting back in the league, I suspect we’ll be closer to 90 points, but hey ho.
Exeter are showing third, they’re currently second but will drop one place by May according to the prediction, five points behind us. There will be no squeaky bums either, as we’re apparently going to be seven points clear of the final play off spot.
Colchester, Newport County, Bury and Mansfield are predicted to make up the top seven, meaning current top seven sides Tranmere and Stevenage are set to miss out.
Few will be surprised to find Macclesfield Town relegated, but their bad form will pick up a little and they’ll be 23rd according to the simulation. That’s still eight points from safety, but painfully for some Northampton Town will be following Chesterfield’s lead with successive relegations.
It is worth pointing out that I ran the same simulation last season at Christmas, further into the season than we are currently, and it predicted we’d finish eighth. Whilst that might seem like a relatively close call, it had Swindon in second, Notts County third and Forest Green relegated.
It’s all a bit of fun, eh?
I trust fivethirtyeight (US site run by polling and data guru Nate Silver) that works on a slightly different approach:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/soccer-predictions/league-two/
I think I prefer that too Michael!