League Two Projected Points Table
With more than half of the League Two campaign behind us it’s time to dust off our projected points table.
Based on projecting the existing home and away points won of each club forward to the end of the season, this table gives a points and goal difference indication of each team’s potential points return come May.
It’s neck and neck between Southend and Cheltenham; with the Shrimpers stronger away and Cheltenham better as hosts. If it goes down to goal difference then Southend nudge it with a title victory on 96 points – which incidentally was what we projected back in October.
Swindon’s strong form since we last did this exercise in October means a 4th place finish with a healthy 87 points looks likely. Importantly, around the 87 mark is normally enough to secure automatic promotion judging by recent seasons, but for that we’ll need to rely on Southend, Cheltenham or Crawley to lose points.
Weighing heavily in our favour for a very strong end to the campaign is that the majority of our remaining games are at the County Ground, where we have been defeated once…not sure who… We’ve a two home game advantage over teams above us which should allow us to close the gap to third.
The remainder of the Play-Off places are made up of Shrewsbury, Gillingham and Torquay. A Swindon versus Martin Ling’s Gulls the likely semi-final based on projecting current form.
Importantly for us….despite currently sitting sixth, Oxford United are projected to finish eighth.
At the bottom of the table, the projected table shows what a low tally might be needed to stave off relegation to the Blue Square Premier.
The current bottom three of Northampton, Plymouth and Dagenham & Redbridge are likely to end the season around the 37 / 38 point mark and broadly similar goal differences.
The Washbag 
Luckily, the resemblance of this to reality is about the same as every Swindon fan waking up one morning thinking;
“you know, that Oxford lot aren’t that bad really. In fact, that yellow and blue is really quite attractive”.
Not going to happen. We’re top 3 all the way.
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Indeed, I agree we’re going to finish in the top three. The only purpose of this table is to indicate how many points each team will accrue if they continue to perform at exactly the same points per game rate until the end of the season.
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that’s my point Ron, there is no point to it because it won’t happen. I love what you do here, but if I want to read a horoscope I’ll go buy OK magazine.
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‘Mystic Ron’ I ain’t…
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It’s pretty similar to the table this week as well. I still say, and I have since October, we will win the league!!
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People may mistake the word ‘projection’ with ‘prediction’.
I predicted last season that Swindon would not be relegated, but the projections came true unfortunately…
Sure, if current form (6 games) is taken into account as well as the relevant strength of opposition in home/away games, a different picture emerges, but only really relevant in the latter stages of the campaign, as there would be too many projected extremes to content with otherwise.
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You’ve got it right. This isn’t a prediction, it is purely a projection to show what current points won home and away translates into total points at the end of the season.
If there’s one thing about football and life in general is that you can’t predict the future…
The main use of this projected table is to equalise the league as some teams have played 25 and others 26 games. This was much more useful at this time last season when the number of games played was significantly different due to the freezing weather etc.
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How many of the last home and away games have you used to create the predicted table?
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I’ve clarified that in the post. The whole results to date, not form over recent games.
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To my mind it would make more sense to use form over the last 10 games. Our early season 4 game losing run is factored into the results as things stand, but our team looks completley different
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A quick back of the napkin calculation looking at the form guide (last 6 home and last 6 away games), the table isn’t that much different in terms of position, but the extremes come to the fore as changes in position are then of course closely linked with recent performance; in this case Accrington benefiting from good relative away form and Torquay from their home form. As Cheltenham only dropped 2 points from their last possible 18 for both home and away games is reflected in the extremely high points tally.
1. Cheltenham (108.07)
2. Southend (97.8)
3. Crawley (91.07)
4. Swindon (90.43)
5. Torquay (86.07)
6. Shrewbury (83.93)
7. Gillingham (79.49)
8. Accrington (79)
9. Oxford (71.34)
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You are right. Basing upon only the form home and away guide does take the extreme form and project this forward, which clearly isn’t the right balance. Hence why I just used results to date and projected that forward as it gives a better average, plus all I wanted to understand was what Swindon’s current tally of 46 points would equate to at the end of the season.
If current form was used then there would need to be a second factor – such as difficulty of future games – to give a better balanced projection.
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*coughs* nerds.
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I think what the projection accurately tell us is that unless the top three suffer a lapse in form, it will be hard to catch them without winning every single match. Pressure.
However, does it take into account head-to-head matches? As we play each of the teams above us, there is no way we both can take maximum points from those matches–I don’t think your projection method takes that into account. Would be best to do the old predictor, match-by-match…
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What a total waste of your time!it just ain’t gonna happen that way!form changes all the time,you can’t predict what’s going to happen in the future by past result’s!managers change teams and bring in new players!teams get injuries and lose form,other teams get better,it’s just a load of ol rubbish!!!!!!!
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Someone else who doesn’t understand the difference between ‘projected’ and ‘predicted’…
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Yeah projected!a total waste of time!nothing better to do?????
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