by Clyde1998 »
29 Nov 2023 18:23
leon Clyde1998 Great win last night. Much needed against a side in the relegation zone, especially with the scale of the result. Agree with others that I don't think we're playing much better than we've been this season, but we are taking chances now and not making as many defensive errors - certainly seems to be more mental toughness. I feel like we've been playing as a mid-table side this season and we're starting to get the results of a mid-table side. The players certainly look a lot more confident now.
Shame we've got to wait until Saturday week until our next league game. Our run of games until Boxing Day will give us a good idea of how good we actually are: Barnsley (H; 7th), Oxford (H; 3rd); Lincoln (A; 9th); Wigan (H; 14th); Peterborough (A; 5th). Wigan would be tenth without their points deduction. If we can get a decent points haul from that run, we'll be fine.
Onwards to Eastleigh on Sunday.
Relegation chance: 52% -> 29%
wow 29% - really? We're 6 points adrift ffs
There's a number of factors as to why it's dropped so much.
It's first of all worth pointing out that the central forecast is for us to finish 19th - so we've gone from clearly being relegation favourites to relegation isn't an issue. The average points for us is 47.9, compared to 44.8 for (projected) 21st-placed Shrewsbury - so that's only just over a win above the relegation zone by the end of the season.
Net xG is used to project future results:
Net xG per game (sourced from Fotmob) - Team / xGF / xGA / xGD- Peterborough / 1.77 / 0.91 / +0.86
- Portsmouth / 1.71 / 1.04 / +0.67
- Derby / 1.43 / 0.95 / +0.48 / +0.48
- Blackpool / 1.43 / 1.00 / +0.43
- Bolton / 1.40 / 1.05 / +0.35
- Oxford / 1.23 / 0.88 / +0.34
- Charlton / 1.42 / 1.16 / +0.27
- Lincoln / 1.11 / 0.99 / +0.11
- Stevenage / 1.20 / 1.10 / +0.10
- Reading / 1.17 / 1.13 / +0.04
- Leyton Orient / 1.11 / 1.10 / +0.01
- Bristol Rovers / 1.06 / 1.08 / -0.02
- Barnsley / 1.31 / 1.37 / -0.06
- Northampton / 0.96 / 1.08 / -0.12
- Wycombe / 1.05 / 1.22 / -0.17
- Port Vale / 0.97 / 1.15 / -0.18
- Carlisle / 0.87 / 1.13 / -0.26
- Fleetwood / 1.09 / 1.37 / -0.27
- Cambridge / 0.92 / 1.21 / -0.29
- Burton / 0.92 / 1.21 / -0.29
- Exeter / 1.01 / 1.35 / -0.34
- Wigan / 0.98 / 1.40 / -0.42
- Shrewsbury / 0.67 / 1.28 / -0.61
- Cheltenham / 0.76 / 1.38 / -0.62
Our net xG is noticeably better than most of the sides around us, which means the model I'm using projects us picking up more points over the rest of the season that the sides around us.
The other factor is points on the board. Whilst we've been more likely to pick up points in future matches, based on our xG, actually having points on the board is more important to our chances of survival - actually winning a game is better than having a 2/3rds chances of winning a game. Getting the wins over the past couple of matches means we've converted games we're projected to get points in into actual points (on top of slightly improving our net xG).
Relegation chance- Cheltenham / 78% (42% chance of finishing bottom)
- Cambridge / 55%
- Shrewsbury / 50%
- Fleetwood / 48%
- Carlisle / 41%
- Exeter / 31%
- Reading / 29%
- Port Vale / 22%
- Burton / 21%
- Wigan / 13%
- Leyton Orient / 4%
- Northampton / 4%
- Wycombe / 2%
- Bristol Rovers / 2%
Of these, I'd say anyone with a relegation chance of Wigan or worse should still be concerned about getting relegated. What we've done is the past couple of games is move from a side that looks certain to be relegated to a side that will be in the relegation picture, but more likely to stay up than go down.
Shrewsbury are an interesting flip side to us: currently 12th, but expected to be relegated half the time due to their performances this season. Generally sides drift towards their net xG as the season goes on, so Shrewsbury could be a side that falls down the league in the second half of the season.
