As the year draws to a close, one of my favourite things to find on Twitter is the annual league tables that Ben Mayhew (@experimental361) does, writes Andy Chapman.
For those that have never seen them before, he takes all of the 92 teams and creates big league table ranking teams on a PPG basis. Over the past few seasons, these have made relatively good viewing for Lincoln fans, and this year isn’t really any different.
We finished the season in 12th place out of all 92 teams. Above us are only four teams currently in League One. Now, I know that at the moment, we are in a bit of a low ebb, but this shows how good the last year really has been. I thought, though, that I would dive a bit deeper into the League One annual table specifically and see what that shows.
The table that I have used shows all the teams that have played League One football this calendar year, so there are 31 teams, including promoted and relegated teams. After a year of football, Lincoln City have finished second in the annual table.
Annual Table Top Ten
- Wycombe – played 45 – 87 points
- Lincoln City – played 44 – 73 points
- Bolton – played 44 – 73 points
- Barnsley – played 46 – 70 points
- Exeter City – played 45 – 69 points
- Reading – played 44 – 68 points
- Leyton Orient – played 44 – 67 points
- Blackpool – played 43 – 65 points
- Peterborough – played 44 – 62 points
- Charlton – played 45 – 57 points.
Now, obviously, these teams are all teams who haven’t been promoted to League One or relegated down from the Championship, and it also doesn’t show teams who gained promotion to the Championship last summer because none of those teams will have played enough games. That being said, for Lincoln to be the second-best of the ever-present teams in League One is definitely a positive for the year and shows that (if we can reclaim the same form) we are a team that should be mixing at the right end of the table. To take into account promoted and relegated sides I decided to take another look but use PPG to sort the table.
PPG Annual League One Table
- Birmingham – 2.3 PPG
- Portsmouth – 2.14 PPG
- Wrexham – 2.09 PPG
- Derby – 2 PPG
- Huddersfield – 1.95 PPG
- Wycombe – 1.93 PPG
- Lincoln City – 1.66 PPG
- Bolton – 1.66 PPG
- Stockport – 1.60 PPG
- Reading – 1.55 PPG
- Oxford – 1.55 PPG
Using PPG brings the teams into the top 10 that most of you would have expected to see and moves Lincoln down to 7th in the annual table, having taken 1.66 points per game across 2024. Obviously, if this was the end of the season, that would leave us just outside of the playoff positions as almost the best of the rest, with Wycombe being ahead of us. When you look at that table and see 4 teams who have played Championship football in 2024 and another two who have ambitions to do so in 2025, it puts us up in very company indeed. I then thought it would be interesting to have a look at sorting the table by wins per game (WPG).
Wins Per Game
- Birmingham – 71% WPG
- Portsmouth – 64 %
- Wrexham – 61%
- Derby 61%
- Huddersfield 59%
- Wycombe – 56%
- Reading – 48%
- Lincoln – 45%
- Bolton – 45%
- Leyton Orient – 45%
45% of the games we played last season ended in victory. Obviously, we all know that a lot of those came in our excellent run of form last season but the good thing about an annual table is that half of the games have come this season. Hopefully we can see a little upturn in form, similar to last year as we step into 2025. The last thing I looked at was losses per game to see if teams weren’t perhaps winning games, were they at least not losing them.
Losses Per Game
31. Birmingham – 10%
30. Wrexham – 13%
29. Portsmouth – 14%
28. Wycombe – 18%
27. Derby – 22%
26. Huddersfield – 23%
25. Bolton – 25%
24. Lincoln – 25%
23. Stockport – 26%
22. Oxford – 27%
(Just for reference, top of this table were Carlisle, who lost 77% of their games)
Again, Lincoln get into the top 10. Again, Lincoln are mixing with sides who have played Championship football this year or teams who have very serious ambitions to do so next year.
I guess the point I am getting to with all of this is we have had a very good year, Skubala has done a very good job. Yes, I am aware our form isn’t great and yes I am aware that half of these games were played with a different squad of players but we are a club who are moving in the right direction and we are mixing with the sorts of teams that expect Championship football not just teams hoping that it might happen one day.
Hopefully this time next year I will be looking back at another successful season and seeing Lincoln up near the top of the annual League One table again!
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