The beauty of the Football League, compared to its North American counterparts that do without relegation and promotion, is that good management is rewarded, and bad management punished.
As economists we worry greatly about endogeneity that makes attaching causality to things difficult, but by and large, teams that have unstable board rooms, and regularly chop and change managers, don’t tend to do that well. Today’s occupants of the Football League’s basement position, Oldham, fall squarely into that category, with a deeply unpopular owner, and no manager having survived a full season for pushing a decade.
In order that RED’s League Two predictions aren’t always dominated by Oldham, a new narrative has been set up to cover those woes.
Nonetheless, it is an early bottom vs top encounter at Boundary Park as Exeter visit. It’s a long, long journey for the visitors though, and so both RED and the bookmakers point towards a very tight encounter (1-1 at 12.9%, 1-0 at 10.1%, 0-1 at 10.6%).
RED seems more willing than the bookmakers to recognise Cambridge’s solid start, and Scunthorpe’s worrying one. Cambridge 46.9% to win for RED, only 36.9% for the bookmakers. A single-goal win for Cambridge in the Battle of the Uniteds is most likely at 12.7%.
The night’s other intriguing clash is on the South Coast, as Plymouth entertain Salford. The gulf in stature between these two clubs is quite substantial based on recent history, but they meet in the League. Plymouth are 40.7% likely to come out on top, and 8.6% likely to win 2-1.
