Data experts predict where Leeds would have finished on what was final day of the Championship
Today is a particularly poignant one for Leeds United fans.
It should have been the last day of the Championship season, with Leeds celebrating promotion at home to Charlton.
As it is there are still nine games to play after the season was suspended in March with Leeds top of the table and seven points clear of Fulham in third.
But how would the season have finished? The BBC has employed data experts from the University of Reading to work it all out.
The experts used an expected goals model to simulate the remaining fixtures.
“We look at all the scorelines in the history of football essentially, and that gives us a sense of how likely a team is to score zero, one, two, three, four goals and so on,” Professor James Reade said.
“You look back at previous matches and say when a weaker team was playing a stronger team, how many will they have scored if it was this point in the season, if this had just happened, and so on. What that gives us for each team and each match is an expected number of goals.”
The good news for Leeds is that across 10,000 simulations, Marcelo Bielsa’s men won the title 54.8% of the time.
That leaves them top in the final standings.
Leeds finished second 35.1% of the time, leaving their combined automatic promotion chances at around 90%.
It’s less than FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver’s prediction site, that had Leeds at 98% to get promoted when the season was suspended.
However, it’s still proof that Leeds have done the work needed to secure promotion whether the season finishes or not.
Whatever metric you use – points-per-game, results as is, results after half a season, ending the season on data – Leeds stay in the top two.
Today should have been party time. Hopefully, the actual promotion party is not far away.
In other Leeds United news, Adam Pope: Trusted source has told me nine-game finish to EFL season put forward on Friday