Opinion: Learning from play-off history

Steve Sanders, @ncfcnumbers

Let’s stop short of saying "I don't care" but there really wasn’t much to write home about on Saturday, was there?

So, instead, time to travel further back and look at some Championship play-off history for five key indicators and what they tell us about Norwich City’s chances. (Be warned: if you are of a positive disposition, this may not make for enjoyable reading.)

Starting with a sobering one. Since the four-team play-offs were introduced in the second-tier 35 years ago, there hasn’t ever been a points deficit between two teams as large as the 17 between Leeds United and Norwich City this year. Never. As in not once.

The Canaries can take a little heart from the fact that on the other occasion in the past 20 years where the gap’s been as much as 15 points, it was the underdogs who came out on top (Sheffield Wednesday v Chris Hughton’s Brighton in 2016). But that remains the only time a side more than 12 points worse off than their opponents in the regular season has won a play-off semi-final at this level. So yeah, bit of a mountain to climb.

‘The play-offs are a lottery’, right? Well, not really, no. The benefit of home advantage in the second-leg – not to mention the added quality of a higher league finish – is substantial enough that eight of the last ten promoted teams have come from 3rd or 4th placed finishers. As it goes, the other two were managed by two guys called Dean Smith and David Wagner.

That said, of the last 50 play-off semi-final ties, the away team in the second leg has progressed 17 times. That’s basically a third – so forget the points difference for 180 minutes and it’s not an insurmountable task. The real lesson here though? Don’t lose your home leg. Of those 17, nine won at home, seven drew, and the sheering insanity of Frank Lampard’s Derby losing the first-leg to Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds and toppling them at Elland Road remains the only outlier.

Defensively, Norwich City have shored things up in the second half of the season – conceding 25 compared to 39 in the first-half. That’s 64 goals over the entire campaign then, the ninth worst record in the Championship.

Brace yourselves, because no team has ever been promoted to the Premier League having conceded more than 62 (incidentally Southampton have shipped 63, so they too would be making history here…). On the plus side, of the five sides to have gone up conceding 60 or more, three stayed up the following season. So once we’re there, it’ll be plain sailing.

Another slice of history that would accompany a Norwich City 2024 promotion would be allying it with some epically shaky away form.

Only Bolton in 1995 have gone up with fewer away points than the Canaries’ 24 this season, and four of the previous six play-off winners have had the best away record of the four competing teams that season. If records are there to be broken, then there could be some serious shattering at Elland Road a week on Thursday.

One of the strangest quirks of this season’s play-offs is that no team is coming into it in any real form. In the last five seasons, only Bielsa’s Leeds in 2018/19 (again) have come into the play-off campaign with fewer than nine points from their final six games. This season, none of the four teams has more than nine from their previous six.

Extend that form guide to 10 games and you get a pretty good idea of your victors. Seven of the last 10 Championship Play-Off winners have had the best record from the final ten matches of the season of the competing teams, and the other three have had the second-best record going in. So at last this column can bring a slice of good news: this season’s ‘in-form’ team over the last ten games? Norwich City.