Trending: Wembley winners

Form. History. Records. Curses. What makes a play-off final champion?

Huw Davies

Ahead of a play-off final, every supporter looks for signs. Not signs to Wembley, although that does remind me of this cracker from a tube station in 2012, which I still have saved on my phone:

Where’s ‘Wembly’?

No, the signs appear in fans’ minds long before that arch looms into view. ‘My team hasn’t lost to these opponents in three seasons – that’s a good sign.’ ‘No club wearing our colours has won after losing in two previous finals – that’s a bad sign.’ ‘Oh no, a black cat just crossed my path – wait, I support Sunderland.’ 

It can be difficult to separate statistics from superstitions and insight from insanity. I’m not sure I’ve even succeeded in doing it here, in this attempt to analyse trends and see what matters and what doesn’t. But let’s dive into the wonderful play-off final madness together, as I try to answer your burning and not-so-burning questions. 

Does league form matter?

Yes… mostly. 

Let’s look at each EFL play-off finalist since the 2004/05 rebrand from First, Second and Third Division to Championship, League One and League Two (unless mentioned, all statistics in this piece will be taken from that Rubicon moment 19 years ago, just as all top-flight records began in 1992).

If we consider the last six regular-season fixtures played by each of those finalists, then we can see that, unsurprisingly, the more in-form team generally wins. When a team collected at least three more points from those games than their play-off final opponents did, they won the final 69% of the time. Nice.

Championship finalists tend to end their campaigns in better form than their lower-league cousins. On average, Championship play-off final winners have taken 11.4 points from their final half-dozen matches and the losers a still-decent 10.5, whereas in League One the average is 10.2pts for the victors and 9.7 for the vanquished, and in League Two it’s 10.3 and 9.4.

Now, what would you consider a ‘good’ points return for a promotion contender across six matches? This is my estimate, presented in an attractive table:

What was your answer? Was it more than four? That doesn’t bode well for Leeds, who, if they do get to Wembley this week, will have the worst form of any finalist in EFL play-off history. That includes some 220 other teams, dating back to 1987. Every single one had a better run-in than Leeds.*

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*Shorter-period-form stans would argue that Brentford losing their final four fixtures in 1996/97 was worse, but we say that dice have six sides, overs have six legal deliveries, and form comprises six matches.

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It’s been a strange implosion from Daniel Farke’s mob, in both defence (conceding a fifth of their season’s goals in the final fortnight) and attack (scoring just once in three home games after 17 in a row without drawing a blank). In the Championship, that tends to matter: each of the last six Wembley winners has averaged at least two points per game in preparation.

Yet it doesn’t have to be terminal. Crystal Palace and Huddersfield were both out of form when they were promoted in 2013 and 2017, following two of the worst finals in any sport’s history. And although we’re focusing on the past 20 years, it’s worth mentioning that Cardiff won the 2002/03 play-offs in ye olde Division Two despite taking two points from their final five fixtures. On Monday 14th April, they were one point away from the automatic places. They ended up one point away from missing out altogether. But they regrouped and beat Bristol City 1-0 over two legs, then went up the road to the Millennium Stadium and edged past QPR in extra time.

Doing the double over a team doesn’t mean you’ll then beat them at Wembley

So: no finalist in any division has taken a mere four points from their final six league fixtures, as Leeds did. Is it curtains for Crewe, then, who collected only five and then lost the first leg of their play-off semi?

Not necessarily – because not only will the second-leg turnaround have installed great belief, but League Two finals have stopped going to form. Only two of the last 20 showpieces have been won by the ‘form underdog’ but both were recent: 2019, as struggling Tranmere beat red-hot Newport – probably the only time Newport will ever be described as ‘red-hot’ unless it’s on fire – and 2023, when an out-of-sorts Carlisle shocked Stockport, who’d barely lost since January.

But Crewe must still beware…

League Two is crazy town

In the Championship, the team who finished 3rd have reached 15 of the last 19 finals and won 9 of those (see, Leeds, it isn’t all bad). In League One, 3rd or 4th win two-thirds of the time, as one might expect.

In League Two, it’s chaos.

The basement division is a real leveller, which makes sense as you don’t want a wonky bottom floor. In 19 seasons, and across a precisely equal share of match-ups (4th v 5th, 5th v 7th and so on), 4th has triumphed five times, 5th and 6th four times apiece, and 7th on six occasions. It could hardly be more even – and the lowest-ranked team narrowly comes out on top. This year that’s Crawley, who also ended the season in better form than 6th-placed Crewe before winning their semi-final by a record-breaking margin, dismantling MK Dons’ soul and scattering it over several counties.

But, but, but Crewe did the double over Crawley this season! So they did. Surprisingly, however, that isn’t an indicator of success at Wembley. Across nearly a third of all EFL play-off finals since 2005, two sides have met with one having won both of their league encounters. That’s actually quite a lot in the circumstances, but anyway: easy win for the prior victors, you’d think.

Nope. Sure, on ten occasions that double has become a treble, or even a quadruple – in 2012/13, Northampton faced Bradford five times and tasted defeat at home, away, in the FA Cup and finally at Wembley, to complete a recurring nightmare made flesh. But no fewer than seven times, the bullies have found their own heads in the toilet as their twice-beaten victims took revenge. Throw in the fact that teams who lost one of the prior meetings and drew the other have won more finals than those with a win and a draw, and it balances out perfectly. One such example was in 2009, when Gillingham beat Shrewsbury under the arch having been pantsed 7-0 in September. He who laughs last and all that. 

Last year, Sheffield Wednesday banished the memories of 2-0 and 4-2 defeats to Barnsley by beating them in the League One play-off final with virtually the last kick of the game. That final broke with third-tier tradition: not only was it the first time this overturning of a double defeat had happened in League One, but it reversed a weird trend. Before then, 4th had beaten 3rd five times out of six, including four years in a row, so Wednesday poo-pooed two hoodoos at once.

Oddly, that could be a good sign for Oxford.

There’s a first time for everything