If My Grandmother Had Wheels: Four Alternative League Tables

The Best and only the Best League

In some sense arbitrary, but you have to assume that the top six teams are the best sides in the league – whether they are the best footballing sides is subjective, but certainly, they must be the best at picking up points. 

But who fared badly at their hands, and who held firm. 

This league is very simple; take out the top six sides, then calculate a league for only the games played between the remaining teams against those top six. Err, perhaps it isn’t that simple. Anyway, everyone should have played twelve games – a maximum haul of 36 points. Let’s just see how it panned out.

Believe it or not, yes, we are second to Wycombe just on goal difference. Which, to be fair, is pretty impressive. Admittedly the Chairboys did win five of their games, to our three, but they also lost seven to our four.

It gets better. Our results are skewed by Peterborough sneaking into the playoffs on the final day. If you just look at the top four, we picked up all but one of our points in this league from them and didn’t lose a game. Not only that but half of our goals conceded were against the Posh. In fact, if you calculate a similar league just based on the top four we are runaway winners with double the points of second place.

I feel pretty impressed by that. We suffered a lot of draws at the hands of middling teams and struggled to score and, yet, when it came to it we went toe-to-toe with the top teams and beat them.

This is starting to get complicated now, but, if you re-include the top-six in our vs. top-six league we still land joint third after Ipswich and Plymouth and just ahead of Barnsley, Bolton, and Sheffield Wednesday (Peterborough languishes back in joining twelfth).

The bottom of the table is actually something of a surprise. Morecambe, MK Dons, and Accrington are all still relegated but they are joined by Shrewsbury. Salop, who we beat on the final day to pip them to the 11th spot, had an overall OK season but managed just three points (a single win) against the top teams.

Forest Green fans, who’ve suffered an abject season, might be pretty depressed by this table. They came sixth from bottom, picking up six points from two wins against the top six. In fact, FGR managed just six wins this season, meaning a third of them were against top sides. That’s just how football works sometimes.

As a side note, this table does beg the question (and I can feel the excitement from some of you!) of how the top six did against the rest of us! That boils down to 36 games and in essence, this table shows us which top teams relied on beating the others vs. competing with each other at the top. And really, what it shows is that Wednesday bottled it.