There are currently plenty of mixed feelings amongst the Coventry City fanbase as to how the club’s season is going to pan out after another disappointing start in terms of the team’s league form and results.
Confidence will be high in the Sky Blues camp, however, that the players have shown enough in their good games to suggest a recovery is not that far away, while recent seasons have taught us not to write off City too early.
Most neutrals had Mark Robins’ men among the favourites for a push for promotion in 2024/25 but it will come as no surprise that those objectively analysing recent data have the side tracking for a probable bottom-half table finish in the Championship.
The boffins at Opta say, at this stage, Coventry’s most likely finish is 16th. They come to that conclusion using underlying statistics and say there’s a 7.5 per cent chance, apparently, based on Opta simulating the season thousands of times, that City will end up nine places from the bottom.
There’s a 0.2 per cent chance – it will happen one time in a thousand – that City will sneak into the top two for automatic promotion and a 4.4 per cent chance that they will end up somewhere in the play-off spots, according to the calculations. There is a 8.9 per cent chance that they will end up somewhere in the bottom three.
It all illustrates the size of the task confronting Robins in turning the good ship around – and also the competitiveness of the Championship.
However, with only nine games gone, there aren’t many clubs either being entirely ruled out for promotion or relegation. Sunderland, Sheffield United, Burnley, West Brom, Leeds and Norwich have no or near-negligible chance of going down; only Cardiff are ruled out for a shot at the top six. Indeed, teams are so closely stuck together that City’s most likely finish is 16th but they are 14th in the predicted table.
Leeds have a whopping 37.7 per cent chance of going up as champions or nearly 60 per cent of being in the top two. Sheffield united and Burnley are looking well placed too, with West Brom not far behind. There are struggles ahead, however, for Cardiff, Portsmouth and Queens Park Rangers.
Anyway, there are 37 games to work it out for real and then revisit this to see how close they got in the laboratory.
Leave a Reply