English Championship midweek 9 and 10 February

There are only 3 midweek Championship games this week as a few teams are playing in the F.A. Cup that is also taking place (such as Bournemouth who scored an excellent first half goal against Burnley in the early game). There is also a Friday game which we’ve included.

Tonight, Rotherham play Cardiff and Sheffield Wednesday play Wycombe Wanderers.

Of the two games, the Rotherham match has different outcomes predicted in our model (44% Rotherham win in our model) to bookmakers (37.7% Cardiff win as the most likely).

In addition, tomorrow night, Reading play at home against Brentford. The two teams are both doing well this season with Brentford 2nd and Reading only 2 places below them in 4th.

Historically, the two teams have been fairly well matched although Reading have won 2 more games than Brentford although Brentford have won the last 3 meetings

(Past results are linked to the 11v11 website).

Interestingly our model more or less reflects this balance – that the two teams have been close in terms of historic results but that the model very fractionally favours Brentford, but only just (1.35 – 1.38 expected goals for instance, home – away). We’ve predicted a 1-1 draw. Bookmakers however favour Brentford at 45% compared to Reading on 26%.

We’ve also included Friday’s game between Blackburn and Preston. Blackburn are the highest scoring team outside the top 6 and this is reflected in their higher expected goals. They are also at over 50% to win in our model with bookmakers showing only 3% less likely.