By Opta Analyst | Created at 2025-01-17 14:26:57 | Updated at 2025-01-22 00:42:49
4 days ago
The 2024-25 Championship season is now 26 matchdays deep, so it’s an ideal time to check in on the Opta supercomputer projections. Who will win promotion to the Premier League?
The most exciting league in the world, right? Well, the Championship is certainly one of the most chaotic in Europe, where any team can beat another at any point of the season.
Do we have the data to back that up? Well, not exactly, but like all good analysts we’re basing this largely off vibes.
Data is heavily involved in the Opta supercomputer’s projections for the 2024-25 Championship season, however. We ran those back in August before the campaign began, and now, with 308 games behind us and helping power the algorithms, we’re back to provide you all with a much-needed update.
Before a ball was kicked, Leeds United were predicted as the most likely champions and Cardiff and Plymouth were deemed the biggest candidates for relegation. Have those projections changed, or has the supercomputer shifted its data-powered predictions?
Who Will be Promoted to the Premier League?
Before the 2024-25 Championship season began, the Opta supercomputer made Leeds United favourites for automatic promotion to the Premier League.
This was hardly a shock – they lost the play-off final last season, despite accumulating 90 points. In fact, they became the first team to win as many as 90 points and not be promoted from the second tier since Sunderland in 1997-98. However, to see them promoted in the top two places in 63.4% of projections was a confident shout from the supercomputer.
Now, 26 matchdays into the season, Leeds sit top of the league by a single point and the supercomputer is even more confident of their success. As things stand, Leeds win automatic promotion in 71.56% of the 10,000 season simulations and seal the Championship title in 41.88% of those, which are both more than any other side in the competition.
They have averaged 2.04 points per game this season – if they sustain that, they’ll surpass last season’s 90-point total and reach 94. On average, across the 10,000 simulations, they won 90 points again in 2024-25.
It promises to be a close-run contest, however. Across those sims, Sheffield United averaged 88.9 points and Burnley averaged 88.3. Could Leeds miss out by the narrowest of margins, just like they did last season to Leicester and Ipswich?
Burnley won automatic promotion in 55.80% of current supercomputer simulations, with Sheffield United doing so slightly more often at 60.30%, while Sunderland are a more outside chance at 10.92%. It seems unlikely that any team other than these four win automatic promotion, with only 142 of the 10,000 simulations seeing a team currently outside the top four make a late surge and finish inside the top two places.
Who is Likely to Make the Play-offs?
With Sunderland having a 10.92% chance of a top-two finish, they naturally have a better chance of finishing inside the play-off spots (third to sixth) than the three automatic promotion favourites Leeds, Burnley and Sheffield United.
The Black Cats finish inside the play-off spots 83.22% of the time across the 10,000 current supercomputer simulations, which is wildly different to our pre-season projections.
After a poor 2023-24 campaign that ended terribly – Sunderland won just nine points from their final 15 games, with only relegated Rotherham (8) accumulating fewer – the supercomputer was downbeat about this season back in August. In fact, only four clubs were relegated more often than them (24.1%) in those pre-season projections.
Now, that projection is looking quite foolish after Régis Le Bris has turned them into one of the best Championship sides. With 50 points from 26 games, it’s Sunderland’s best start to a second-tier season since 1998-99 (56 points, when they won the title) and they have accumulated more points than at this stage of the season than both 2004-05 (49) and 2006-07 (37) when they went on to win the title.
In August, the supercomputer saw Sunderland average 56.2 points per season across it’s 10,000 simulations. That average is now 80.9 and a rise of 24.7, which is a bigger difference than any other Championship club between August and now.
As for other sides in with a shout of finishing in the play-off spots, the supercomputer is giving Middlesbrough (55.02%) and West Brom (56.02%) a strong chance, while Blackburn (42.66%) are another who have surpassed pre-season expectations.
Watford have done well under Tom Cleverley, particularly at Vicarage Road, and are currently given a 19.64% chance of finishing between third and sixth, while Norwich City (9.40%), Bristol City (8.82%) and Sheffield Wednesday (7.70%) could make a push in the final months of the campaign.
Who are Likely to be Relegated from the Championship?
In August, the Opta supercomputer made Cardiff City and Plymouth Argyle favourites for the drop to League One. Now, 26 matchdays later, the supercomputer thinks their relegation is even more likely, with the two sides occupying the bottom two places in the table.
Plymouth recently sacked Wayne Rooney and are bottom of the league on 20 points. As it stands, they are relegated in 77.22% of simulations, while Cardiff are relegated the next most (60.90%).
Things can change quickly, though – a lot of the teams at the bottom have at least one game in hand (Portsmouth have two) and there are just 10 points separating bottom club Plymouth and Millwall in 14th. After all, both Sheffield Wednesday and QPR were in the relegation zone at this stage last season and neither ended up there.
Luton Town began the season as the supercomputer’s fifth-most likely side to win automatic promotion back to the Premier League (16.70%), but after a disastrous first half to 2024-25, where they have lost two more games than any other club (15), they are now sixth favourites for relegation to League One (23.58%).
Like Sunderland, Luton are a team that the supercomputer has had to readjust expectations for. In pre-season, the 10,000 simulations saw them average 70.9 points over the 2024-25 season. Now, that average is just 50.2 – a drop of nearly 21 points.
When Luton were last relegated from the Championship (in 2006-07), they’d won 30 points at this stage of the season – five more than they have now. These are worrying times at Kenilworth Road.
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