No, no and Bradford

Well, Oldham didn't send their fans home overly happy on Saturday, only drawing 1-1 with their Yorkshire neighbours Huddersfield. Furthermore it seems a very poor turn-out from Huddersfield led to the attendance being only a paltry 7,000, as opposed to the 9,500 gate predicted. So that's a no and a no.

Moving on to Bradford, another Yorkshire neighbour, to whom Latics travel this afternoon. It turns out Latics have won their previous five matches against Bradford home and away, and given Latics occupy 4th position, and Bradford 22nd, one might reasonably expect a Latics win. Sure enough, my model suggests Latics have a 52% chance of winning, with Bradford only a meagre 23%. Of course, such models struggle to take into account the late season desperation which tends to surround matches involving sides in the relegation zone, and leads to them out-performing relative to their league position.

Given further that Latics have failed to win their previous two matches away against teams in or near the relegation zone, this suggests a draw. I'll be disappointed if that happens, but I can see it happening. Probabilities for individual scores run something like this: the most probable score is a 1-0 Latics win, with 13%, then a 1-1 draw following with a 12% probability. I'd go for that myself. There's a 2% probability on Latics repeating their 4-1 win at Bradford last season.

Come on Oldham!

Also, if Scunthorpe win their match away at Northampton today, and Nottm Forest fail to win at home to Rotherham, Scunthorpe will be promoted. A Scunthorpe win has a 47% probability, a draw or Rotherham win at the City Ground at 37%, suggesting that, assuming these two events are independent of each other (!), that there's actually only a 17% probability of Scunthorpe securing promotion today. By next week though I'm sure it'll be confirmed...

Easter Saturday's matches...

Who's going to do what on this important footballing weekend? Today, 11 matches take place in League One, after Scunthorpe effectively sealed their promotion last night winning 1-0 over Yeovil Town.

Below are the predictions for this afternoon's matches:

Home Draw Away
Blackpool v Tranmere 46.6% 29.4% 24.0%
Bournemouth v Bradford 44.6% 29.2% 26.1%
Brentford v Cheltenham 33.8% 30.1% 36.1%
Brighton v Doncaster 36.7% 31.6% 31.8%
Bristol C v Swansea 12.3% 21.0% 5.8%
Chesterfield v Crewe 40.7% 26.3% 33.0%
Leyton Orient v Northampton 41.8% 26.6% 31.7%
Millwall v Nottm Forest 28.2% 26.6% 45.1%
Oldham v Huddersfield 66.5% 19.3% 14.2%
Port Vale v Carlisle 46.5% 26.3% 27.2%
Rotherham v Gillingham 52.0% 22.1% 25.9%

Disturbingly, for the biggest match of the day, the model appears to have been hit by a glitch; the probabilities don't sum to unity. This will be looked into.

For the remaining matches, the one I'm interested in is Oldham v Huddersfield. Oldham have never beaten Huddersfield twice in one season before, but today they appear to have a 66.5% chance of doing just that, having won 3-0 at Huddersfield earlier in the campaign. Oldham are indeed strong favourites for this match, which reflects that fact Oldham are considerably higher in the league table. Huddersfield are not in relegation trouble, but are firmly in mid-table. Fink Tank put Oldham at 59.7%, also rating Oldham as overwhelming favourites.

But will they prevail in this local derby? With it being a local derby, a large attendance can be expected. Attendances have been increasing gradually over the season, and a gate of around 10,000 ought to be expected this afternoon. Huddersfield may not bring as many fans over the Pennines as they would if they were challenging nearer the top of the division, but nonetheless, my forecasting model suggests an attendance of 9,479. Let's see if the Latics can send this bumper crowd home happy as they further cement their play-off place.

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!

A local derby...

...provides another challenge for my Oldham Athletic attendance prediction model. Simply fired through, the model gives a prediction which my eye says is far too low: 5,696. Certainly, based on attendances in the league this season thus far, this seems too high - attendances have barely broken the 5,000 mark. However, Bradford travel only 22 miles to get to Oldham, and the attendances at the previous two matches between the sides at Boundary Park have been 9,381 and 6,982.

So what to do? Are Bradford a special case, counting pretty much as Oldham's closest rivals right now, with the absence of a Wigan or a Stockport in the same division? Unfortunately the tag of closest rivals actually goes to Huddersfield Town at 16 miles away. Furthermore, Huddersfield do appear to bring better travelling followings than Bradford, in my limited experience and memory.

Nevertheless, Bradford and Huddersfield do pretty much count as our only rivals this season, and are rivals that bring large visiting contingents - unlike, for example, Bury. As such, why not a Rivals variable?

Inserting that, and the model predicts a slightly more satisfying 6,179. I still think it's a bit low, but then this season gates have always been pretty low. Bradford aren't on the best of runs (although they've signed a very good player in Tommy Black this week), while the Latics head into this game unbeaten in seven home games and after two consecutive away victories. So maybe, all that accounted for, a gate not much over 6,000 is about right. We'll see.

Oh and while I'm here I might as well predict the result I guess. 3-1 Oldham. No rationale for it. Come on Oldham!