League One: 2014/15 the (un)luckiest teams in the Football League

While League Two was reasonably well behaved according to shot metrics, League One, or at least the bottom half, decided to throw most of that out of the window.
If we start at the top, Bristol City locked up the title a good few weeks early but finished the season with an astronomical PDO of almost 120 – the highest in the whole of the football league.
Bristol’s shooting % and save % were both 10 percentage points above average and of course each was the highest mark in the division.

Position	Team	Played	Won	Drawn	Lost	Goals For	Goals Against	Goal Difference	Points
1	Bristol City	46	29	12	5	96	38	58	99
2	Milton Keynes Dons	46	27	10	9	101	44	57	91
3	Preston	46	25	14	7	79	40	39	89
4	Swindon	46	23	10	13	76	57	19	79
5	Sheffield United	46	19	14	13	66	53	13	71
6	Chesterfield	46	19	12	15	68	55	13	69
7	Bradford	46	17	14	15	55	55		65
8	Rochdale	46	19	6	21	72	66	6	63
9	Peterboro	46	18	9	19	53	56	-3	63
10	Fleetwood Town	46	17	12	17	49	52	-3	63
11	Barnsley	46	17	11	18	62	61	1	62
12	Gillingham	46	16	14	16	65	66	-1	62
13	Doncaster	46	16	13	17	58	62	-4	61
14	Walsall	46	14	17	15	50	54	-4	59
15	Oldham	46	14	15	17	54	67	-13	57
16	Scunthorpe	46	14	14	18	62	75	-13	56
17	Coventry	46	13	16	17	49	60	-11	55
18	Port Vale	46	15	9	22	55	65	-10	54
19	Colchester	46	14	10	22	58	77	-19	52
20	Crewe	46	14	10	22	43	75	-32	52
21	Notts County	46	12	14	20	45	63	-18	50
22	Crawley Town	46	13	11	22	53	79	-26	50
23	Leyton Orient	46	12	13	21	59	69	-10	49
24	Yeovil	46	10	10	26	36	75	-39	40

The Robins had enjoyed a high PDO 115 all season but far from regressing over the closing weeks (see County, Derby) they actually increased their PDO – that’s what happens when you stick six past Bradford and eight past Walsall in two of the last four games. But the Robins were only sixth in shot share (Corsi/TSR) and fourth in shots on target share over the season – both around ten percentage points off the top team, MK Dons.
Indeed, while MK Dons are not well liked around the football league for their move away from south west London, it is hard to argue that they do not deserve promotion. Preston and Swindon (in that order) round out the top three in both the shot share categories and so it is gratifying to see that one of them will be promoted via the playoffs.

Position	Team	Shots for total	Shots against total	Corsi/TSR	shots on target for total	shots on target against total	Shots on target share	Shooting % For	Save %	PDO
11	Barnsley	437	506	0.463	177	222	0.444	35.03	72.52	107.55
7	Bradford	469	446	0.513	205	169	0.548	26.82	67.47	94.29
1	Bristol City	573	479	0.545	240	185	0.565	39.99	79.45	119.45
6	Chesterfield	551	419	0.568	225	192	0.54	30.22	71.36	101.58
19	Colchester	499	545	0.478	216	237	0.477	26.84	67.52	94.36
17	Coventry	484	439	0.524	180	169	0.516	27.23	64.49	91.71
22	Crawley Town	369	660	0.359	134	285	0.32	39.57	72.28	111.85
20	Crewe	356	660	0.35	171	269	0.389	25.15	72.12	97.27
13	Doncaster	537	446	0.546	225	177	0.559	25.79	64.99	90.78
10	Fleetwood Town	464	603	0.435	193	213	0.475	25.38	75.59	100.97
12	Gillingham	438	583	0.429	180	233	0.436	36.11	71.67	107.78
23	Leyton Orient	514	466	0.524	234	201	0.538	25.22	65.67	90.89
2	Milton Keynes Dons	673	366	0.648	288	151	0.656	35.07	70.88	105.95
21	Notts County	477	642	0.426	203	260	0.438	22.17	75.78	97.94
15	Oldham	459	451	0.505	182	188	0.492	29.67	64.35	94.02
9	Peterboro	503	509	0.497	206	203	0.503	25.74	72.42	98.17
18	Port Vale	476	542	0.468	193	234	0.452	28.49	72.21	100.7
3	Preston	631	404	0.61	254	150	0.629	31.1	73.33	104.43
8	Rochdale	483	469	0.507	202	201	0.501	35.65	67.18	102.83
16	Scunthorpe	476	543	0.467	204	235	0.465	30.38	68.07	98.46
5	Sheffield United	508	432	0.54	203	167	0.549	32.52	68.26	100.78
4	Swindon	590	422	0.583	255	180	0.586	29.8	68.32	98.11
14	Walsall	523	445	0.54	181	198	0.478	27.62	72.71	100.34
24	Yeovil	455	468	0.493	160	192	0.455	22.51	60.93	83.43

At the other end things got a bit uglier.
I have genuine sympathy for two of the relegated teams – Yeovil (yes, Yeovil who finished dead last by a country mile) and Leyton Orient.
Both these teams had respectable (in Orient’s case, very respectable) shot share numbers but got burned by PDO and what I can only presume is a series of horrible coinciding results.

I have genuine sympathy for two of the relegated teams – Yeovil (yes, Yeovil who finished dead last by a country mile) and Leyton Orient.
Both these teams had respectable (in Orient’s case, very respectable) shot share numbers but got burned by PDO and what I can only presume is a series of horrible coinciding results.

As PDO giveth in the form of Bristol City, PDO taketh away – in this case Yeovil suffered the worst PDO in the entire football league. (Yes worse even than Blackpool.)
So even some reasonably lower mid-table shot share numbers (Yeovil were almost dead even on shots on target share) could not save them from a horrible ending.

But the real violin lament is saved for the east London side. Orient were ninth best in both overall shot share and shots on target share.

Think about that for a minute… the ninth best team in the division got so badly burned by PDO (a whisker away from having the second worst PDO in League One) that they ended up in the second relegation spot.
The final table lies, and does it to a significant extent.

With those two unfortunate victims of luck, variance and awful coincidence taking the bottom two relegation spots, it meant the likes of Gillingham, Barnsley and (most frustratingly) Crewe all survived. Indeed, if you need another example of how powerful PDO can be, Crawley Town, the worst team in the entire football league, were a last day win away from safety.

And despite Crewe battling Crawley for that title, Notts County just couldn’t wriggle free of the relegation zone themselves and Crewe escaped.

Looking at the wider picture, it is good again to see the division as a whole taking greater effect from shot share and shots on target share than PDO – but that will be of little comfort to a handful of teams at either end of the table whose futures could have been so different.