jquery

Tuesday 12 July 2011

How do teams promoted from League 2 get on in League 1

I'm almost at the end of my review of promoted and relegated teams performances and today is the turn of the promoted sides from League 2. To clarify, 4 teams get promoted rather than the 3 up to the championship and the premiership, this means we have more games to look for trends.

It seems that promoted teams do not fair very well when they start out on their League 1 adventure. Of the past 7 seasons we have seen 8 wins, 13 loses and 7 draws in the opening day fixtures. This is not a good stat for those new teams however after the opening day fixture these teams find out quickly how to play at this level.

In the last 4 seasons we have only seen 2 sides win on opening day, 2 seasons ago Gillingham won at home and Brentford won away. Last season we saw 3 loses and 1 draw. 2 of the loses were away, the draw was at home.

Interestingly however, Dagenham last season became the first playoff winning side to lose on opening day since Southend in 05-06. Indeed Dagenham and Southend are the only defeated sides winning the League 2 playoff in the 7 years reviewed, 3 sides have won and there have been 2 draws.

The play off winners this year were Stevenage and they will be at home to Exeter City. Exeter did well last season finishing in the top half and picked up some good wins along the way. Exeter are not particularly good starters away from home so this is a possibility for my opening selections.

Bury travel to Huddersfield. Huddersfield lost out in the play offs and are considered by the bookies to be one of the favorites for promotion. SO I cannot see Bury getting a win on opening day. Wycombe entertain relegated Scunthorpe see my blog to see how relegated teams get on! Given the trends I reckon this is likely to end in a draw. Finally Chesterfield will play Tranmere, Tranmere avoided relegation by 8 points which was fair enough and probably end in the bottom half next season as well. They did pick up 9 wins at home so have some ability there. Its a tough game to call so I won't give advice however the stats suggest Chesterfield won't win!

No comments:

Post a Comment