Just how important is the Boxing Day Match ?

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T

TheMightySaints

New Member
Dec 20, 2011
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Firstly Hello all. Been watching for a while, finally registered and thought I would share this with you.

I got to thinking about how we were doing, and I wondered in previous seasons how teams who were top of the table at this point of the season, got on. Most importantly did they get promoted. ?

I dug around, could not find anything so went off to work it out for myself.
I used www.statto.com for reference data. I looked at the last 10 seasons, and compared the league table on Boxing day with the Final league table for that season.

So where will we be come the end of Boxing Day ? How important might that be ?

The team top of the table Boxing Day has an 80 % probability of automatic promotion.
2nd place has a 50 % probability of automatic promotion.
3rd Place has a 40% probability of automatic promotion.

The chances of both 1st and 2nd gaining automatic promotion is 40 % whilst there is a 100 % probability that at least 1 of them will get automatic promotion.

Lastly there is a 40 % chance that a team outside the top 3 on boxing day will grab an automatic promotion spot.

For what its worth there you have it.

Failing to win on Boxing day could see us slip to 2nd, and thus cut our chances of automatic promotion from 80 % to 50 %. Thats a worrying statistic . . . . but then you can pretty much prove anything with stats !

Also I have focused on league position rather than taking into consideration the relative points totals as well.

If we win on Boxing Day we will have an 80 % probability of getting automatically promoted.
I would have taken that at the start of the season, :emoticon-0102-bigsm !!!!

Happy Xmas - COYR


This post is meant for educational purposes only. Your mileage may vary. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Batteries not included. Slippery when wet. For office use only. Decision of judges is final. This supersedes all previous notices.
 
Fantastic thread, and welcome TMS! I think that the Boxing Day game is definitely a must-win. We have had a poor run compared to earlier in the season, 5 points from a possible 15 in the last 5 games, so we need to kick on and re-establish a bit of a gap between ourselves and 3rd place (and 2nd as well if possible!). No better place to start than in front of a full house at SMS.

Having said that, as always you have to look at our results in the context of what happens with our nearest challengers. If Birmingham beat West Ham, Watford beat Cardiff, and Middlesbrough and Hull draw that would be very nice please Santa!
 
Swiss Tony said:
Each season is different. We have a difficult February if memory serves me well so I think the next two games are very important as the away form is pretty average.
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January through to mid-Feb looks quite difficult. Only one of those seven games is against bottom 10 opposition - and even that's away to Forest, who with their squad are in a completely false position. The season looks a whole lot easier once we've visited Upton Park on Feb 14th. Without a doubt, these two home games are very important.
 
Although we seem to struggle more at the strugglers, so its really hard to say whats bad at this stage. I think its more about us, than the opposition, if we're on our game we'll cause anyone trouble. Hope Adkins has a couple new faces up his sleeve, we've done so well, but we could make it easier on ourselves.
 
st_brendy said:
January through to mid-Feb looks quite difficult. Only one of those seven games is against bottom 10 opposition - and even that's away to Forest, who with their squad are in a completely false position. The season looks a whole lot easier once we've visited Upton Park on Feb 14th. Without a doubt, these two home games are very important.
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But we tend to do better against the top teams in the league, always have and this season is no exception. Apart from Cardiff, we've beaten the other teams in the top 6 (all at home admittedly) and Cardiff are the only team in the top 10 to have beaten us in the league.
 
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