On the question of whether luck evens out over a season …..
I have no background in the theory of stats but intuitively I cannot see a reason why luck should even out over 46 instances - or even a thousand instances. The distribution of luck is not even.
Over the first 2065 Lottery draws 23 came out 282 times, 20 came out 215 times - a 24% difference over what you'd have to say is as sustained and controlled experiment in generating random numbers (1-49) as you can find. The average I reckon is 253 and ten balls were drawn under 240 times.
I'm also not a believer in 'the table doesn't lie' and thought we were a false third in 2017. We were also damn lucky in 2012 (Brighton away among others!) - we've more than paid for these times in the hard years since 2012.