Championship 16 April 2021
Football continues this weekend and continues to kick off at odd times, such as 6pm on a Friday. Whilst these times can help maximise TV viewers by avoiding clashes with some matches, it will be interesting to see how far this carries on into next season with fans returning to stadiums.
Blackburn play Derby and Reading are home to Cardiff tonight in the early kick offs, and these look like they are scheduled so they don’t clash with the Everton v Tottenham game at 8pm.
Both today’s games are predicted to be 1-1 draws in our model.
Looking more closely though Blackburn are nearly 14% more likely to win than Derby in our model, with bookmakers giving a 17% difference between the two teams on likely winners. Similarly with the other game, Reading are 42.6% likely winners with bookmakers giving nearly 1% extra odds. They also have Cardiff at 4% less likely to win than we do.
There are also two, 2-0 wins predicted; Swansea v Wycombe and Brentford v Millwall.
The home teams are 3rd and 4th in the league and whilst they are both a good few points off of automatic promotion, are looking rather likely for play-off spots. Wycombe are still bottom having lost their last match after a 2-match winning run. Bookmakers are slightly less generous than our model but still strongly favour both home teams.
Both Norwich and Watford are predicted to draw 1-1 in their matches, this pretty much means Norwich are simply not going to be stopped from winning the league. Except for one thing, they each play one another in their next game, so the league could be decided on Tuesday evening in yet another 6pm game.
