The revolving page header images and the pseudonyms used may have alerted you to the reality that one of the Scorecasting Economists follows Derby County, and the other Oldham Athletic. It’s been a little while since these two old footballing stagers faced each other, and judging by this footage, this might have been for the good of the game. Nonetheless, one hundred years ago Derby regularly faced Oldham in the top flight. In the 1980s and 1990s it was a regular second division fixture. These days it’s only a reasonably regular League Cup fixture, as the game taking place at Boundary Park tonight is the third League Cup meeting in the last 16 years, second in the last six (plus the match of the pictured match programme from October 1991).
Derby’s stuttering start under Frank Lampard won’t stutter enough for them to be embarrassed at League Two Oldham, however. With a 10% chance the 1-0 win Derby recorded in 2013 will be repeated, but more broadly, Derby have a 68% chance of winning.
More generally, we’ve expanded our forecasts a little, as an attempt to better capture promoted and relegated sides and their fortunes. A side effect of this is that we can forecast cup matches like the League Cup. We’ll write another post on this endeavour shortly…
