A couple of Championship highlights
The alt-3 EFL Championship table appeared for the first time this week. I hope people will enjoy it!
The strength of competition in the Championship keeps things interesting, in terms of league standings.
Here I will just pick out a couple of aspects that might interest people.
Fulham
Fulham currently stand at 4th in the official league table, but they are 8th (narrowly behind Brentford) in the alt-3 table.
The reason is that Fulham have faced a relatively easy fixture list up to now; and their six remaining matches up to the season’s halfway point include tough away matches at Swansea, Preston and Brentford, and finally the home match against second-placed Leeds. The alt-3 table allows for all that, in a mathematically coherent way.
To see Fulham’s current schedule-strength chart, just click on the name “Fulham” in the alt-3 EFL Championship table
Blackburn Rovers
Blackburn’s fixture schedule so far has been pretty average in aggregate, but their schedule-strength chart is weirdly different from that of every other team in the league (and in fact is different from every schedule-strength chart that I have ever seen!)
Most schedule-strength charts, in this or any other league, ‘snake’ slowly from week to week through the season. But Blackburn’s fixtures instead have a pronounced zig-zag pattern. In the first half of this season, Blackburn’s matches against (this season’s) relatively low-ranked opponents tend to be always home matches. So Blackburn’s fixture schedule repeats a simple pattern: a relatively easy match at home followed by a much harder match away. Hence the zig-zag pattern that we see in Blackburn’s schedule-strength chart.
To see any club’s schedule-strength chart, just click on the club name in the EFL Championship table.