English Championship 26 11 2021
More football tonight in the Championship with West Brom v Nottingham Forest at 8pm. I’ve been at a conference all day and it finished late, so am typing this at the point this match is now at half-time.
This is one of those Championship fixtures that I look at and feel slightly nostalgic as when I was growing up in the early 80’s it would have been in the old Division One (now the Premier League).
The most likely score though is a 1-0 home win for West Brom (see model below). We have West Brom at 54% to win with bookmakers mean odds agreeing with us (only 2% higher).
So, instead of nostalgia, looking back slightly less far back to midweek, I just thought I would have a quick look at how we did in terms of predictions.
The big one we got wrong was Fulham v Derby which ended 0-0. It did feel as though there was a better chance of an upset than either our odds or bookmakers means odds gave but it still came as a surprise. Fulham were between 76-73% to win, one of the highest chances to win we’ve had so far this season. Another one the model could hardly predict was Blackburn winning 4-0 against Preston. That said it did give just under 50% chance of a Blackburn win, with bookmakers having them at 56% to win.
One we did get right was the 1-1 between Millwall v Bournemouth where we had an exact 1-1 as 12.6% likely to occur.
So what will happen this weekend?
Logically you’d think if Preston shipped four goals to Blackburn, they won’t fancy their chances against Fulham who were thwarted by Derby in mid-week. Well… Our model predicts a 1-1 draw with Preston having a 22% chance to win. a 1-1 is 11.2% likely as an exact score, with a 0-1 away win for Fulham at 10.4% exact
Speaking of Derby, for some reason the Championship is spread over 4 days this weekend and they play yet another in-form team, Queens Park Rangers on Monday night. After a win and draw against past league leaders, they might just fancy their chances against 4th placed QPR. Our model sort of agrees, in that it gives them a decent chance of a draw. We favour QPR in our model as likely winners at 38% but Derby are only just behind on 34%. Bookmakers mean odds have a slightly bigger margin between the two teams but not much (7% instead of 4%).