Championship Predictions: Promotion and Relegation
After a vital matchday of Championship action at both ends of the table, we give an update on the Opta supercomputer’s projections for automatic promotion and relegation.
Leeds United gained ground on league-leaders Leicester City this weekend after the Foxes could only draw at Hull City on Saturday.
It could have been worse for Enzo Maresca’s side, with Leicester twice going behind before Jamie Vardy fired home an equaliser on both occasions.
Leicester are still odds-on for automatic promotion from the Championship at 91.6%, but they can have Cardiff City to thank for their chances staying as high – the Welsh club defeating Ipswich Town 2-1 with two goals in added time during Saturday’s early kick off.
A run of four points won in five Championship games has seen Leicester’s chance of winning the title fall to 64.8%, however. The gap at the top is now just three points with nine games remaining.
Heading into their final game of 2023, Leicester were being given a 91.3% chance of winning the Championship title. Since the turn of the year, however, they have won 20 points from 12 games – the seventh most in the league over that period.
Conversely, Leeds’ form has been exceptional in 2024. They’ve won 34 of a possible 36 points (W11 D1), 10 points more than any other team in the competition in that time.
After this weekend, Leeds are projected to finish inside the top two 75.6% of the time – that chance was just 21.6% on 29 December. Back then, they only had a 1.5% chance of winning the Championship title, but that has now risen to 28.6%.
Ipswich’s defeat on Saturday in Cardiff has seen their automatic promotion chances drop to 25.5% after being up at 49.4% before the weekend.
It looks set to be the play-offs only for Southampton, despite their weekend win over Sunderland and game in hand on their promotion rivals. Across the 10,000 current simulations by the Opta supercomputer, they finish between third and sixth 92.7% of the time.
As it stands, their most likely opponents in the play-offs will be Ipswich, West Brom and Coventry City.
Coventry defeated Watford 2-1 at Vicarage Road on Saturday and helped seal the fate of yet another Hornets boss. Valérien Ismaël lasted longer than any of the previous nine permanent Watford managers, but still couldn’t see out the season following a dreadful run of form that’s seen them win only one of their last 12 games – that solitary victory coming against bottom side Rotherham.
Tom Cleverley has been named interim manager, and he should be able to stop Watford from falling into League One. They were relegated in just 1.8% of current simulations by the Opta supercomputer – lower than nine other Championship sides.
Based on the Opta Power Rankings, Watford have the second hardest end to the 2023-24 season of all Championship sides. The average Opta Power Ranking of their remaining nine opponents is 78.2 – only Blackburn Rovers (78.8) have a more difficult finish to the Championship season.
Rotherham United are down according to our projections – hardly the toughest call following nine successive defeats and a 20-point gap between themselves and safety.
Sheffield Wednesday are currently second favourites at 53.5%, while QPR (36.8%) and Huddersfield (31.2%) follow. These projections can change fairly dramatically with a few positive results, however – just three points separate seven teams between 17th and 23rd in the table.
It was a good midweek for Leicester City, as they ended a three-game losing streak with their 1-0 away win at Sunderland on Tuesday night. Jamie Vardy’s 13th-minute strike at the Stadium of Light means that the Foxes maintained a three-point lead at the top of the Championship table.
That lead could have been five, had Ipswich not come from behind to secure a late home win over Bristol City.
Kieran McKenna’s team were losing with 10 minutes remaining, but goals from Conor Chaplin and Leif Davis gave them all three points. That means that Ipswich have now won 28 points from losing positions this season in the Championship – the last team to win more in a single Championship season were Aston Villa (29) in 2018-19.
Leeds also won by a single goal on Tuesday evening, beating relegation-threatened Stoke City 1-0 at Elland Road thanks to Dan James’ first-half strike.
Our promotion predictions haven’t changed too much based on these results, but Leicester’s chances of automatic promotion have moved up by three percentage points to 90.3% and Ipswich have got closer to Leeds.
Each of the top three currently have at least 76 points. Every single team who had 76+ points after 36 Championship games between 2004-05 and 2022-23 were top of the table at that stage, and then went on to win the league.
We’ve never seen a tussle for automatic promotion from the Championship like this one.
To show how close the battle for automatic promotion looks set to be, the Opta supercomputer has played out the rest of the Championship season 10,000 times and across those simulations both Ipswich and Leeds ended with an average point tally of 95.
Based on three points for a win, no team in second-tier history (since 1888) have finished outside the top two places having won at least 91 points. Sunderland finished in third back in 1997-98 with 90 points, while Charlton finished on 88 that season and were in fourth place.
More recently, Brighton (89 in 2015-16) and Fulham (88 in 2017-18) had to make do with third place finishes despite a fantastic points tally.
While Rotherham are as good as down – the teams above them have all won double the number of points – the battle for survival across the rest of the league continues.
Just six points separate Sheffield Wednesday in 23rd and Bristol City in 14th, with the Owls picking up yet another win in midweek. Their 1-0 win over relegation rivals Plymouth was their fourth successive Championship win.
Their chances of relegation have fallen again, from 59.4% on Monday to 45.1% today. That’s still the second-highest of any team, but now closer to Stoke (35.3%), QPR (27.2%), Blackburn (24.1%) and Huddersfield (23.2%).
Leicester City have hit a bad run of form at the worst time. Their 2-1 defeat to QPR on Saturday was their third Championship loss in a row following back-to-back defeats against Leeds United and Middlesbrough. Their only consolation this weekend was that Leeds failed to win in the early Saturday game at Huddersfield.
Leicester’s latest defeat has seen their chances of automatic promotion fall from 98.1% on 23 February to 87.4% today with the Opta supercomputer. Of course, they are more than likely to still achieve a top-two finish, but should they suffer a midweek loss at Sunderland, the almighty collapse could be on.
Enzo Maresca’s side (78 points) still hold a five-point lead over third place Leeds (73), but their gap at the top of the table has been reduced to just three points following Ipswich’s win at Plymouth this weekend. The Foxes won the title in 64.5% of the current Opta supercomputer simulations, with Leeds (20.2%) and Ipswich (13.9%) the next most likely Championship winners.
The team to enjoy the best weekend at the top of the Championship were Kieran McKenna’s Ipswich, with their victory in Devon boosting their chances of automatic promotion moving from 28.5% before the weekend’s action to 47.7% today.
Southampton fans will probably admit that automatic promotion feels unlikely now after recent results, but they did boost their outside chance this weekend with a 4-3 victory at Birmingham City thanks to Joe Aribo’s injury-time winner. Saints will almost certainly be in the play-offs, with a finish between third and sixth occurring in 91.7% of current Opta supercomputer simulations.
As well as Southampton and one of Leeds or Ipswich, the most likely two teams to compete in the play-offs as they stand are West Brom (89.0%) and Norwich City (42.8%). There’s every chance that we could see an East Anglia derby in the play-offs this season.
At the bottom, Rotherham finished inside the bottom three in every single one of the 10,000 Opta supercomputer simulations today – hardly a surprise when there is now a 19-point gap between themselves and safety. The other two current favourites for the drop to League One are Sheffield Wednesday (59.4%) and Stoke City (31.6%), although both those sides picked up victories this weekend.
The fact that Sheffield Wednesday are in with a chance of survival shows how good a job Danny Röhl has done in Yorkshire, however. Since his first Championship game on 21 October, the Owls have been the 11th best team in the league with 32 points in 24 games. When we checked in with the Opta supercomputer on 29 December, they were being given a 91.9% chance of being relegated, so their improvement since then has given them a fighting chance of staying up.
The 2023-24 Championship promotion race took another turn on Friday night, as second-place Leeds United came from a goal down to beat leaders Leicester City 3-1. It was the sixth time this season that Daniel Farke’s side have conceded first and still gone on to win – the most by Leeds in a league season since 1999-00 in the Premier League.
In fact, Leeds’ victory was their ninth league win in a row, matching Leicester’s longest winning run from the Championship season back in September and October. This is the first campaign to have two second-tier teams achieve nine-match winning streaks since 1904-05 (three teams).
When Leicester led 1-0 going into the final 10 minutes at Elland Road, it looked like they would extend their lead at the top of the Championship table to 12 points before the weekend. However, a late turnaround saw Leeds reduce that gap to just six – something Ipswich Town also did on Saturday following their win at home to Birmingham City.
Southampton continued their poor two-week spell, as they lost for a third time in four league matches with a surprise 2-1 home defeat to Millwall after previously losing by the same scoreline to Hull in midweek in front of their own fans.
What do those results mean for the four sides’ chances of automatic promotion according to the Opta supercomputer, however?
The good news for Leicester City is that they’ve had such a brilliant season that defeat to their title rivals hasn’t made much of an impact at all.
Before kick-off on Friday, Enzo Maresca’s side were being given a 98.1% chance of automatic promotion to the Premier League, while the defeat to Leeds has reduced that by just 2.7 percentage points (now 95.4%). Barring an absolutely dire finish to the campaign, Leicester will be a Premier League club next season.
The win over the Foxes, combined with Southampton’s failure to pick up any points against Millwall, meant that Leeds’ chance of automatic promotion rose to 71.6% from 58.8%. Despite being level on points with Ipswich in the table (72 with 12 games remaining), Leeds’ current form is giving them the advantage.
Since the turn of the year, Leeds have won the most points in the Championship, collecting all 27 possible across the nine matches. Ipswich have done well, too; they’ve won the second most in this period alongside rivals Norwich City, but the problem is their points tally is still nine fewer than Leeds in that timeframe.
As for the Championship title, it’s still Leicester’s to lose according to the supercomputer (75.4% chance), although Leeds almost doubled their chances of winning the league this weekend, moving from 8.7% on Friday morning to 19.0% on Monday.
The Opta supercomputer has simulated the remainder of the Championship season 10,000 times. Across those, the two teams with the highest average points totals at the end of the campaign are obviously Leicester (103.0) and Leeds (93.7) based on what we’ve already told you.
But what about the four teams who will make up the play-offs? Ipswich (90.9) and Southampton (89.6) are going to be there barring a dramatic losing run, but interestingly the supercomputer thinks Coventry City (73.2) will sneak in ahead of Hull City (71.4) alongside West Brom (75.8). This will give Coventry the opportunity to go one better and win promotion via the play-offs after last season’s penalty shootout heartache against Luton at Wembley.
• Opta’s League Prediction model estimates the likelihood of teams finishing in each position in the competition. We can therefore see how successful a team’s season is likely to be, whether it’s their relegation or title chances.
• The model estimates the probability of each match outcome (win, draw or loss) by using betting market odds and Opta Power Rankings. The odds and rankings are based on historical and recent team performances.
• The model considers the strength of opponents by using these match outcome probabilities and simulates the remaining fixtures in the competition thousands of times. By analysing the outcome of each of these simulations, the model can see how often teams finished in each league position to create our final predictions.
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