Lower Leagues, R6 (September 1)

Our forecasts tend to be quite low scoring, and in the lower leagues this is emphatically so. In League One, 9 of 12 forecasts are for 1-0 wins, home or away, and every one of the twelve League Two games are 1-0 forecasts. This is a disproportionate reflection of the low scoring nature of football; about 10% of all matches do finish 1-0 or 1-1. However, two-thirds of matches involve teams scoring up to two goals. Ideally we’d like to reflect this a little better in our forecasts. Our unconditional forecasts at the moment over-predict 1-1 draws, while our conditional ones over-predict 1-0s.
In terms of the nitty gritty, free-scoring Peterborough are expected to continue their 100% start to the season with a (you guessed it) 1-0 win over Doncaster, while Sunderland are expected to beat Oxford 2-1 to maintain their strong start. Portsmouth and Barnsley are also expected to keep applying pressure at the top with wins (1-0 and 2-0 respectively).

In League Two, leaders Lincoln visit third placed Exeter, and with an 11% chance will fall to a 1-0 defeat, but more generally an Exeter victory is much more likely, at 47%. Swindon, an anathema to our low scoring forecasts having seen an average of 4 goals in their 5 games so far this season, are at home to second placed MK Dons and a tight game (home probability 36%, away probability 38%, draw 26%) is expected to be shaded by the visitors by a single goal (0-1, 10%). There’s a 55% chance, apparently, that Oldham will make it three wins from four and likely enter the play-off places. Stranger things have happened, but it turns out that in their 110 year Football League history, the most common score in an Oldham home league game is that that we have predicted: a 1-0 home win. It’ll be the 208th if it happens…