Who will take the last chance of promotion and win the EFL playoffs?

The best predictions for the EFL promotion playoffs may be the simplest. You will hear some elaborate theories - teams who narrowly missed automatic promotion will be devastated and fail in the playoffs, teams who only just squeezed into the playoffs have momentum that will propel them upward, and so on.

I did not find any evidence to support those theories when I compared playoff results with regular season results.

The most likely winners are the best team, and more often than some of us are willing to accept the best team will be the one that at the end of the regular season had most points. Do not complicate things unnecessarily.

In previous seasons the average number of points between the highest and lowest playoff qualifier was eight. This season the gap is ten points in the Championship, six in League One and five in League Two. This season’s playoffs start on Monday.

I am not saying only the highest qualifiers can win. Any qualifier can win. I am saying that in most circumstances the best estimate of a team’s chance of winning the playoffs will be one derived from the 46 results that got them into the playoffs.

I compared scores in the playoffs and regular season for qualifiers in the Championship, League One and League Two. I did so for the 32 seasons from 1988-89 to 2019-20.

The playoffs are a competition for the four highest finishers in a division who were not promoted automatically. I will call the highest qualifier one, the second highest two, the third highest three and the lowest four.

In two-legged semi-finals qualifier one plays qualifier four and qualifier two plays qualifier three. On average at the end of the regular season qualifier one had eight points more than qualifier four and qualifier two had three points more than qualifier three.

Scores in the regular season suggested to me that qualifiers two should score 51 per cent of all goals scored in games against qualifiers three and qualifiers one should score 54 per cent of all goals scored in games against qualifiers four.

And what happened in the playoff semi-finals? Qualifiers two scored 51 per cent of all goals in games against qualifiers three while qualifiers one scored 54 per cent of all goals in games against qualifiers four. Overall, scores in the regular season predicted scores in the playoffs perfectly.

And what did that mean in practice for chances of reaching the final? Qualifiers two progressed to the final 52 times out of 96 – a strike-rate of 54 per cent. Qualifiers one progressed to the final 61 times out of 96 – a strike-rate of 64 per cent. The better one team did relative to another in the regular season the more likely they were to beat them in the playoffs. For these contests the simplest predictions probably are the best.

Semi-final first legs could be low scoring

After 46 games of the regular season spread over ten months, everything for the playoff qualifiers is decided by two or three games in the space of a few weeks. At stake is where they will play next season: will they achieve their ambition and go up to a higher level, or will they have to stay where they are? As you might expect, games can be cagey, especially the early ones.

The team in each semi-final who finished higher in the regular season play away in the first leg. They will usually be at least slightly better, cancelling out some if not all of the home team’s ground advantage in normal circumstances. Elsewhere that would be a recipe for low scores. And so it has been here.

The average number of goals in playoff semi-final first legs has been 2.1. Sixty-seven per cent featured fewer than 2.5 goals.

Scores rose in second legs. Just as there tend to be more goals in the second half of a game, so in two-legged ties there tend to be more goals in the second leg. The average number of goals in playoff semi-final second legs (excluding extra time when played) has been 2.6. Only 50 per cent of those delivered fewer than 2.5 goals.

What to look out for in the finals

Playoff finals, when we get to them, are like semi-finals. Regular season results give a reliable impression of what will happen in them.

I studied all one-legged EFL playoff finals – they started in 1990. Regular season results suggested to me that the teams who had finished higher in the table should have scored 52 per cent of all the goals in finals. And what proportion did they score? Fifty-two per cent.

The average difference in regular season points between finalists was four.

Fifty-eight per cent of finalists had been separated in the table by one place, the other 42 per cent by two places. It is not possible for the teams who had been three places apart to meet in the final.

More than a quarter of finalists had been separated in the table by no more than one point, more than a half were separated by no more than three points and three-quarters were separated by no more than five points.

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