Stats expert, Naked Football Show contributor and new TWTD columnist Chris Rand has been doing some number crunching to compare Town's 2007/08 performance with previous seasons.

Finding myself having to do some Excel work to do today, and looking for some more interesting stats to distract me, I pasted in the Championship tables since the new tiering began 16 seasons ago (1992), so I could have some fun with unusual ratios and the Sort function in general.

We have, of course, been in the Championship for 11 of those 16 seasons. Anyway, here's some interesting findings.

Home Wins

Our total of 15 home wins has been bettered on 25 occasions, including three times by ourselves (we won 17 home games three years ago).

Home Defeats

Our single home defeat is only the 11th time that feat has been achieved (nobody's ever gone undefeated at home). But we're the first club to manage just one defeat at home and still finish outside the top four (half of the other ten ended up champions).

Home Points

52 home points is good (joint 21st best ever) but trailing the 54 we managed three years ago and well behind the 60 achieved by Sunderland in 1998/99, Man City in 2001/02 and Reading in 2005/06.

Home Goals

Our 44 goals scored at home was good, but nothing special (joint 40th best ever, and a total we've beaten ourselves on five occasions, including 2002/03, 2003/04 and 2004/05 - ah, remember the BFJ years?).

However, our 14 goals conceded at home was the joint 11th best by anyone ever, beating our previous best, the 1999/00 promotion season, by one. Our home goal difference of +30 was also comfortably our best ever, although a way off the +44 achieved by Man City in the season mentioned earlier.

Away Wins

Curiously, a team has had as few away wins as our three before and finished even higher (Sheff Utd, sixth in 1997/8). Three away wins is, unsurprisingly though, our lowest total ever. It's worth noting that our second lowest total, five, was recorded last season, suggesting that an inability to perform on the road might be a bit of a Magilton thing.

Away Defeats

Similarly, it's worth recording that we've only once before has 12 defeats away... and that was last season.

Away Goals

Our 21 goals scored was comfortably our worst ever - we managed 24 and 25 in the past two seasons, even though we finished in the bottom half of the table.

The 42 goals conceded was also comfortably our worst ever: we only let in 30 last season and 34 the season before. Not surprisngly then, the away goal difference of -21 is also a stinker: only twice before has a top-half team managed such a bad figure (Notts Co in 1993/94 and Stockport in 1997/98).

Now we get onto the even more obscure stuff!

Our home points to away points ratio of 3.059 has only been bettered on five occasions, and always by teams finishing down the bottom. The difference in our home points and away points of 35 has only been equalled once before, by Reading in 1996/97 - they finished 18th.

Our home goals scored to away goals scored ratio (2.095) was our highest ever, while our away goals conceded to home goals conceded ratio (3.0) was the second highest by anyone, ever. Only Portsmouth in 1992/93 (4.1) can top that, which they did by conceding just nine at home.

The ratio of goals scored to goals conceded used to be called the ‘goal average' in the good old days. Our home goal average this season was 3.143, comfortably our best ever, and only beaten on 12 occasions (that Portsmouth season again).

No prizes for predicting that our away goal average (0.50) was our worst ever, although plenty of teams have done worse, but only three have ever done so and still finished in the top half (Tranmere, extraordinarily, finished fifth in 1994/95 despite scoring just 16 away while conceding 35.

Anyway, if anyone else wants to use the spreadsheet to reveal some other trends, I'd be interested to see them. http://www.chrisrand.com/stuff/championship.html.

Photo: Action Images

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