Off the back of this post from yesterday.
Instead of judging each opponent by where they are in the table now, this uses the betting odds for each game at kick-off. The odds already account for form, injuries and home advantage at that moment. So a side that was struggling in August counts as weaker than the same side playing well in October.
For every game, I worked out how many points an average Championship team would expect from that same fixture: same opponent, same ground, same day. Average that over the 11 games and you get the number in the table. The “average team” is an imaginary club bang in the middle of the league for strength. We ask how many points it would have got from your fixtures, so the number shows how hard your games were, not how good you are(as in you are compared against of a baseline and how much you deviate from it).
- Lower number = tougher start. An average run is about 1.37 points per game.
- Tiles: how strong each opponent was on the day, ranked 1 to 24 from the odds (1 = the best team in the league at that point, 24 = the worst). This isn’t the league table at the time. It’s how good the bookies thought each team was, so a decent side that lost its first two games can still rank high, and Southampton’s deduction doesn’t count. Green is a win, red a loss, grey a draw, and outlined tiles are away games.
- Pts vs own odds: points actually won compared with what each club’s own odds said they’d get.
What it shows:
- Toughest starts: Bolton, Birmingham, Burnley, Lincoln, Norwich.
- Easiest starts: Bristol City, Southampton, Cardiff.
- Swansea are 8 points above what the odds expected, and Norwich and Preston are 8 below. That’s partly luck and partly the bookies misjudging teams.
Odds are closing prices from 5 bookmakers, for games up to 20 October.
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