Attendance vs Crewe

It's been a couple of weeks since the last home match, and with a couple more wins under the belt, one might expect a bumper gate in the home match tonight against Crewe, which kicked off about seven minutes ago. Particularly given one of the two wins was a crushing 3-0 win at local rivals Huddersfield. However, my model of attendances predicts a gate as low as 4,289.

A number of factors cause this: it's a Tuesday night; it's December, Christmas is coming and all that. However, it's the first home game for a while.

I can't believe the gate will be that low. I'm looking into forecasting using what is apparently a very good forecasting device, the exponentially weighted moving average. By altering the parameter on the weight from 0.1 to 0.9 I get a range of forecasts between 5,122 and 5,903.

I'm inclined to go with the naive forecast with parameter 0.1 to be honest, I reckon the gate will be just around 5,000. I could be proved wrong, and my model right however. I just hope Latics win!