The real tale of the 2013/14 Championship season

The Championship kicks-off this weekend and I like that it has the first set of fixtures all to itself without any Premier League games going on.

But it takes at least a few weeks of games before the stats we’ll typically be dealing with to become useable or have anywhere near enough of a sample size to be significant.

So to start things off I thought I’d look back at last season in the Championship and see just who deserved to get relegated and promoted and if we tell a wider story of the campaign.

To do this I’m using data from WhoScored and FootStats.

Sadly not all the raw data I wanted is available there, but by using shots per game for/against and multiplying by 46 I can get to pretty much the right number – certainly suitable enough for this exercise.

First, here’s a reminder of the final table from the 2013/14 season:

Team	Pos	P	W	D	L	GF	GA	GD	Pts
Leicester	1	46	31	9	6	83	43	40	102
Burnley	2	46	26	15	5	72	37	35	93
Derby	3	46	25	10	11	84	52	32	85
Queens Park Rangers	4	46	23	11	12	60	44	16	80
Wigan	5	46	21	10	15	61	48	13	73
Brighton	6	46	19	15	12	55	40	15	72
Reading	7	46	19	14	13	70	56	14	71
Blackburn	8	46	18	16	12	70	62	8	70
Ipswich	9	46	18	14	14	60	54	6	68
Bournemouth	10	46	18	12	16	67	66	1	66
Nottingham Forest	11	46	16	17	13	67	64	3	65
Middlesbrough	12	46	16	16	14	62	50	12	64
Watford	13	46	15	15	16	74	64	10	60
Bolton	14	46	14	17	15	59	60	-1	59
Leeds	15	46	16	9	21	59	67	-8	57
Sheffield Wednesday	16	46	13	14	19	63	65	-2	53
Huddersfield	17	46	14	11	21	58	65	-7	53
Charlton	18	46	13	12	21	41	61	-20	51
Millwall	19	46	11	15	20	46	74	-28	48
Blackpool	20	46	11	13	22	38	66	-28	46
Birmingham	21	46	11	11	24	58	74	-16	44
Doncaster	22	46	11	11	24	39	70	-31	44
Barnsley	23	46	9	12	25	44	77	-33	39
Yeovil	24	46	8	13	25	44	75	-31	37

At the top Leicester romped to promotion with Burnley nine points behind. QPR won the play-offs after finishing five points behind third place Derby.

At the bottom Yeovil and Barnsley were cut adrift while Doncaster suffered relegation on the last day after Birmingham’s amazing comeback.

All the numbers would seem to make sense: teams that scored the most and conceded the fewest got promoted, those that did the reverse were relegated, and everyone else was in-between.

But did the best teams really get promoted?

And how bad were the relegated trio.

Let’s start with measuring the balance of play (in the form of shots taken) that each team accounted for over the course of the season.

All other things being equal, to succeed a team wants to be outshooting its opponents regularly.

To measure this we use Corsi or Total Shots Ratio (TSR) – I prefer Corsi as it’s where I first became familiar with the context, so I’m going to stick with using that, plus I like the sound of it better.

(I could go into a deeper explanation, but for the case of brevity I suggest you read the Stats Bomb definitions piece linked to on the sidebar if you want to know more.)

Team	Pos	Corsi
Leicester	1	0.58
Burnley	2	0.52
Derby	3	0.54
Queens Park Rangers	4	0.54
Wigan	5	0.55
Brighton	6	0.52
Reading	7	0.46
Blackburn	8	0.53
Ipswich	9	0.53
Bournemouth	10	0.52
Nottingham Forest	11	0.5
Middlesbrough	12	0.53
Watford	13	0.5
Bolton	14	0.48
Leeds	15	0.51
Sheffield Wednesday	16	0.53
Huddersfield	17	0.52
Charlton	18	0.44
Millwall	19	0.49
Blackpool	20	0.47
Birmingham	21	0.45
Doncaster	22	0.42
Barnsley	23	0.46
Yeovil	24	0.41

What does this table tell us? Well most of the teams’ Corsi values seem to line up fairly well alongside their actual finishing position.

As we can see, Leicester really did dominate, typically taking 58% of the shots in a game – way above what any other team could muster.

QPR were second best in that regard, and so from a Corsi perspective at least, worthy of that promotion place.

Burnley, however, finished joint ninth along with Brighton, Bournemouth and Huddersfield. So how did the Lancashire side manage to achieve such a clear second place when Brighton only made the playoffs and the other two were stuck snugly in mid-table?

We’ll look at the main reason for this later.

At the other end of the table, Yeovil and Doncaster were clearly the two worst teams in the division in terms of shot metrics - and by a long way.

But Barnsley’s 46% result, while not world beating, is better than Birmingham and Charlton, and the same as Reading, who all finished higher.

In Reading’s case, this would appear a massive anomaly that stands out and needs to be further investigated.

So let’s do that.

Another valuable measurement in analytics is PDO. It’s simple, but can suggest whether a team’s performance is sustainable or due largely to luck. Again, I recommend reading the Stats Bomb link, but in short, it adds up the team’s save % (saves made from shots on target faced) and shooting % (goals scored from shots on target taken).

Numbers will be clustered around 100, with those further away suggesting a greater element of luck – be it good or bad.

Team	Pos	SH% for	SV% for	PDO
Leicester	1	33.74	73.62	107.36
Burnley	2	33.03	77.16	110.19
Derby	3	36.84	69.23	106.07
Queens Park Rangers	4	29.41	74.27	103.68
Wigan	5	29.9	73.48	103.38
Brighton	6	31.25	77.27	108.52
Reading	7	39.33	76.47	115.8
Blackburn	8	30.04	66.84	96.88
Ipswich	9	29.56	66.46	96.02
Bournemouth	10	29.91	65.8	95.71
Nottingham Forest	11	31.46	65.41	96.87
Middlesbrough	12	28.57	71.43	100
Watford	13	34.42	69.95	104.37
Bolton	14	27.06	70.44	97.5
Leeds	15	32.6	63.78	96.38
Sheffield Wednesday	16	32.31	65.97	98.28
Huddersfield	17	28.86	67.98	96.84
Charlton	18	25.47	69.5	94.97
Millwall	19	25.41	64.93	90.34
Blackpool	20	26.57	64.13	90.7
Birmingham	21	29.74	68.91	98.65
Doncaster	22	26	70.59	96.59
Barnsley	23	25.88	67.78	93.66
Yeovil	24	24.31	72.12	96.43

Again, these figures line-up reasonably well with the table, but they really help explain some of those anomalies.

The biggest candidate here is Reading. Riding a massive PDO score of 115.80 (a full five points higher than any other team) we can see the Royals’ playoff push was driven by sky high shooting and save percentages.

This also helps explain a significant part of Burnley’s success too.

Unfortunately, there’s very little evidence that such high PDO scores are repeatable – i.e. that they are part of a hidden talent or certain tactic.

This leads to the suggestion that unless things change dramatically for both Reading and Burnley, this season could be a much harder fight for them in their respective divisions.

Lower down the table, it becomes clear that Blackpool and Millwall were screwed by PDO. The upheaval at Blackpool this summer means the team is highly uncertain, but both these sides deserved to finish a good few places higher than they did.
Barnsley too can count themselves somewhat unlucky to have been thrown so deep into the relegation tangle.

So to sum up the 2013/14 Championship season: Leicester were head and shoulders above the competition with QPR’s place in the Premier League, albeit via the playoffs, a valid one.

Burnley’s promotion party was fuelled by a mountainous PDO score, as was Reading’s ultimately unsuccessful playoff push.

Yeovil and Doncaster were just epically bad, while Barnsley fans can consider themselves just a little unlucky to be watching their team in League One this season.

As for Blackpool and Millwall; as far as they are concerned the only way is up for their PDO – probably.