Championship prediction experts finally change their tune on Huddersfield Town play-off hopes

Spreadsheets are brilliant. Absolutely love them. The elegant simplicity of a COUNTIFS, the wondrous flexibility of a SUMIFS, the time-saving functionality of INDEX(MATCH have saved countless hours of mind-numbing calculations even for something as simple as how many times Josh Koroma has scored in the last 15 minutes of games (two, against Sheffield United and Cardiff) or when Town last kept five straight clean sheets (April 2011).

Trying to work that out manually is as much of a mug’s game as trying to make predictions about football, a sport inherently bound up in chaos, luck and surprising turns of events. So it’s only natural that some outlets should have combined the two endeavours.

FiveThirtyEight have one of the most respected league table predictors in the game, while expected goals has become a vital tool for analysts to try and tell which sides might be on the fall or on the rise – we use Infogol, for instance. But neither outlet’s varying algorithms had been able to predict that Huddersfield Town would be in the play-off race at this stage of the season.

All campaign long, both websites have expected Carlos Corberan’s side to drop back down the table. As recently as 23rd February, FiveThirtyEight had Town finishing eighth, rating their play-off chances at just 40%. A month earlier, they had Town in 12th, with just a 13% of a play-off finish. Meanwhile, Infogol’s xG table has Town just 12th; their forecasts throughout the season have consistently had Town outside the top six.

Now, that has changed. Going into the 41st game of the season, against Luton Town on Monday evening, both Infogol and FiveThirtyEight agree that Town are on course to finish sixth. FiveThirtyEight’s average simulated season rates