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Bill's Take: Wembley Would Be 50/50 Chance For Fifth Placed Rams

Without sticking my neck out too much, it looks as though the Rams will finish in fifth place in the Championship, with the first playoff leg at home and the second leg away against a fourth placed Hull.

With two games to play, Hull lead the Rams by three points with matches against lowly Bolton and Rotherham still to play. Given the Rams’ final two fixtures are against Brighton and Ipswich; it would take a major upset for the Rams to catch Hull from here. Given also that the Rams are six points ahead of sixth placed Sheffield Wednesday, it would take a major collapse by the Rams in order to subside to sixth place.

So what will fifth place mean for the Rams? Conventional wisdom has it that it is always better to play the away leg first in the playoffs, so that a team will know what is required for the home leg.

To test this theory, I took a look at all of the Championship playoff results for the last ten seasons, to see whether the team playing the first leg away enjoyed more success. This provided twenty pairings; ten of them being third against sixth placed finishers, and ten were fourth against fifth.

First let us take the easy part; we expect that the third placed finisher would normally be a better team than the sixth placed finisher, and this theory is backed up in the playoff results.

Nine of the last ten seasons, the third placed team has gone through to the final, rather than the sixth placed team. The only exception occurred in 2009/2010 when Blackpool finished sixth and won both home and away against third placed… drum roll, please…., Nottingham Forest! So these matches need not trouble us any more; if history is a guide, then Sheffield Wednesday are not going to Wembley.

The matches between fourth and fifth have been, as we might expect, much closer. Over the ten year period, the team finishing fourth has won five times. This means, of course, that the team playing away in the first leg has won five times out of ten. But this means also that the team finishing fifth has also won five times out of the ten; that is, the team playing the first leg at home has succeeded as often as not. Most surprisingly, of those five fifth placed winners, three won after only managing to draw the first leg at home.

Before doing this research, I thought it might show that the playoffs are different than the preceding league season; that the playoffs are a law to themselves. This is not the case. The research shows that the third placed finisher will maintain its better quality against the sixth placed finisher in the playoffs; and that fourth and fifth are pretty much at parity in the playoffs, just as they were in the league.

One factor that ought to help the Rams is the presence of Harry Redknapp and his involvement with the squad. It is hard to know just what a contribution he has made to the club so far, although results suggest it may have been significant. His knowledge should be really valuable in the playoffs; especially as we have an inexperienced head coach.

We should probably not expect that the Rams’ league form against Hull this season which included both home and away wins, along with a six goal to nil aggregate score, will be repeated in the playoffs. But the Rams will go in with a measure of equality and perhaps a psychological advantage due to our league success.

Over the years the playoffs have given Rams fans some interesting memories and I think this year will be no exception.



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