What to expect when everything is on the line in the last game of an EFL season

Strange things can happen in the final round of EFL fixtures. Last season Bristol Rovers won 7-0 against already relegated Scunthorpe to gain promotion from League Two on goals scored. They pipped Northampton, who kicked off in a promotion place and won but did not go up.

Weird turnarounds at the end of an EFL season – wonderful if you are on the right side of them, woeful if you are not.

This season too Northampton will start the last game in a promotion place. This time, though, a win will take them up regardless of scores elsewhere.

After nine months and 45 games, Northampton and others are approaching a moment of truth. The last day of the season is Sunday in League One, Monday in the Championship and League Two.

What should we expect? How often do dramatic results occur? More often than results in previous weeks would have led us to suppose.

EFL teams who need to win their last game – to gain automatic promotion, qualify for the playoffs or avoid relegation – have won about 20 per cent more often than they did in earlier games.

The all-important question, of course, is do need-to-win teams get the wins they need as often as the odds require?

I have kept detailed records of the final weekend of the last 21 EFL seasons – those from 2001-02 to 2021-22. Before each I noted teams who still had something to play for – those who needed a draw or a win to guarantee or give themselves a chance of automatic promotion, a playoff place or safety from relegation.

In many games neither team had anything to play for. In some games both teams had everything to play for. All of those games were similar in that both teams had the same motivation. Either it was equally high or equally low. We can say that the teams’ motivations were symmetrical.

What I want to do here is look at the games in which one team had something to play for and the other had nothing to play – games in which motivations were asymmetrical. There were 261 of them.

Teams who needed to win their last game for automatic promotion or a playoff place won 65 per cent of the time. Teams who needed to win their last game to escape relegation won 47 per cent of the time.

Then I looked at the results those teams had achieved in their previous 45 games. And this is what I found. Teams who needed to win their last game for automatic promotion or a playoff place had earlier in the season won 45 per cent of the time. And teams who needed to win their last game to evade relegation had earlier in the season won 26 per cent of the time.

So on the last day promotion-chasing teams won 20 per cent more often and relegation-fleeing teams won 21 per cent more often.

There were probably two things going on, as I have said in recent weeks in some other discussions of end-of-season changes in the EFL and Premier League. Teams who needed to win managed to raise their performance level. Their opponents who had nothing to play for performed at a lower level than they had before. The combination of those two changes produced results of which there had been no hint in most previous performances.

Teams who needed to draw their last game did so 39 per cent of the time. There was little difference in that regard between teams aspiring to automatic promotion or the playoffs and teams trying to avoid relegation.

And the draw-rate on the last day for those teams was obviously much higher than on other days or in EFL games generally.

Teams chasing promotion in one form or another who needed to draw their last game did so 38 per cent of the time. They had drawn 29 per cent of earlier games. Teams fleeing relegation who needed to draw their last game did so 39 per cent of the time. They had drawn 28 per cent of earlier games. Over the whole 21 seasons the draw-rate in all EFL games was 27 per cent.

What happens in the last game is the culmination of something that has been building for a few games.

At Easter, I wrote about how over the last seven games of an EFL season teams who start in or around the relegation zone tend to do as well as teams who start in mid-table. I gave three possibilities for this season: Huddersfield and Stoke in the Championship, Oxford and Fleetwood in League One, Crawley and Walsall in League Two. Actually, in each instance, the team that started lower have gained more points since. One of them a few more, the others a lot more.

Usually there is a steady increase in pace before a sudden acceleration into the last game. Teams who need to win their last game to avoid relegation have done as well collectively as teams in earlier games who were striving for the playoffs.

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