Bristol City are heading to the play-offs after their good recent form.
That is according to Five Thirty Eight - the brainchild of world famous statistician Nate Silver.
Silver was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world after correctly predicting the outcomes of the 2008 and 2012 US elections - but his background is actually in sports stats.
The 41-year-old rose to fame for developing a system for forecasting performances and career development of Major League Baseball stars before he launched the blog Five Thirty Eight in 2008, using it to correctly call the subsequent two US elections.
His website has now produced a Championship model and, after the latest round of games, they have predicted the latest table.
The Robins' two impressive victories over Sheffield United and Middlesbrough are enough to convince the stats men that they're heading for the play-offs.
City are predicted to finish fifth, making the play-offs by four points and setting up a two-legged tie with West Bromwich Albion.
In fact, the Robins now have a 67 per cent chance of making the top six, according to the prediction.
The final predicted table.
Norwich City - 94 points
Leeds United - 89 points
Sheffield United - 86 points
West Brom - 81 points
Bristol City - 73 points
Aston Villa - 71 points
Derby County - 69 points
Middlesbrough - 69 points
Nottingham Forest - 66 points
Preston North End - 66 points
Sheffield Wednesday - 65 points
Swansea City - 63 points
Hull City - 63 points
Brentford - 62 points
Stoke City - 57 points
Blackburn Rovers - 56 points
QPR - 52 points
Birmingham City - 51 points
Millwall - 47 points
Wigan Athletic - 47 points
Reading - 46 points
Rotherham United - 43 points
Bolton Wanderers - 39 points
Ipswich Town - 30 points
How it works
Silver’s sports modelling crunches a torrent of numbers to produce a unique ‘soccer performance index’ for each club.
That is derived from historical data on past performance, individual player match-by-match ratings based on Opta scores, attacking and defending weighting and a complex variety of other factors including the vogue measure of ‘expected goals.’
The model also takes account of types of goals scored and conceded and tries to quantify ‘luck’, the discrepancy between data showing the team is playing well but a result going against them. That SPI changes with every result.
