Midweek is a busy week in the Football League, with a full set of fixtures in Leagues One and Two. We continue to refine our conditional forecasts, also. There’s a fuzzy area around where all three probabilities (home win, away win and a draw) are similar,  though usually with the draw a little less likely than the home or away win.
But if the draw is at 28%, home win at 32% and away win at 30%, it seems most likely that a draw scoreline is the better forecast than either team to win. It’s an empirical question as to at what point a draw is the right scoreline to predict, relative to a win for either side, and one we will look at in time.
In the meantime, we make use of the measure of entropy thanks to Claude Shannon, a measure which is highest the more “undecided” is a market – i.e. the closer to 33.333% is each probability in a football match. If the measure of entropy is above 1.09 (corresponding to probabilities between 28% and 39%), we conclude the most likely outcome is a draw, and provide a draw scoreline as our prediction. These are our conditional forecasts.
In the next two tables, we present our forecasts constructed this way. In League One, the strong starts from Sunderland and Barnsley seem set to continue (2-1 away wins, both with probability 9%, but both with win probabilities above 40%). In League Two, Lincoln and MK Dons may end up stealing a march on Exeter and Stevenage in the early four-way tie at the summit of the league.

Most likely Win (%)
Score Pr (%) P(H) P(A)
Lincoln Bury 1-0 10% 40% 34%
Macclesfield Cheltenham 1-0 11% 40% 32%
Colchester Crewe 2-1 9% 48% 29%
Cambridge U Exeter 1-0 11% 40% 33%
MK Dons Grimsby 1-0 13% 59% 18%
Tranmere Mansfield 1-1 13% 37% 35%
Morecambe Northampton 1-2 9% 29% 47%
Newport Co Notts Co 1-0 11% 43% 31%
Yeovil Oldham 0-1 13% 30% 40%
Carlisle Port Vale 1-0 11% 46% 28%
Forest Green Stevenage 2-1 9% 39% 37%
Crawley Swindon 1-2 9% 31% 44%
Most likely Win (%)
Score Pr (%) P(H) P(A)
Oxford Accrington 1-0 11% 51% 23%
Rochdale Barnsley 1-2 9% 35% 40%
Bradford Burton 1-1 13% 39% 30%
Blackpool Coventry 1-0 14% 47% 24%
Charlton Peterborough 2-1 9% 43% 31%
Bristol R Portsmouth 1-0 9% 40% 34%
Doncaster Shrewsbury 1-0 11% 48% 26%
Luton Southend 1-0 9% 40% 33%
AFC W’don Walsall 1-0 12% 42% 29%
Plymouth Wycombe 1-0 14% 53% 20%
Scunthorpe Fleetwood 1-0 14% 53% 21%
Gillingham Sunderland 1-2 9% 34% 42%