What Does It Take To Get League One Promotion? The Key Stats All Promoted Clubs Share

I was asked by Patreons recently to break down exactly what it took to get promoted in League One.

I’m not talking about just having more points, but what other key metrics did a promoted club have? For instance, we bang on about xG, but is a lot of xG something all promoted clubs have? Or are shots important? Or possession?

With that in mind, I have been back over the promoted clubs from the last five seasons to see if they share any key characteristics. I’ve included the top two, and the club that went up as play-off winners.

Can I just say, getting this data was not easy, as Wyscout included play-off data in the club’s numbers, so I had to look at each play-off match and extract xG and xG against, and work out positions in the table afterwards! Still, when Patreons ask, I do try to answer if I can. The best way to break this down is to present the key findings, and then present the data.

I took the final position in each table for promoted teams and worked out an average. So, in 2024/25, Birmingham City scored 84 goals and were placed first. Wrexham and Charlton scored 67 goals each and were joint tenth. The average, therefore, would be seventh (21 divided by three teams).

While this does not indicate you need to score loads of goals, what it does over five years is show us which key metric the promoted clubs had the collective highest average in. I hope that makes sense.

Solid Defence Leads To Promotion

While you might think goals would be the key, it seems that not conceding is actually slightly more important. The obvious caveat is that these numbers are all high – you have to be in the top six for most metrics in order to win promotion.

However, the stat which promoted clubs see the highest average placing is goals conceded, not goals scored. On average, promoted clubs placed third for goals conceded, and in every single season of the last five, the club that concedes the fewest goals goes up.

Only twice has a club outside the top five for goals conceded been promoted in the sample seasons – Oxford United in 2023/24, and Sunderland in 2021/22.

On average, a promoted club concedes 41 goals, but also outperforms xG against, with 48 the average. This is important, as it shows another big factor is defending the box and outperforming your expected goals against. Only once has a team conceded more than their xG against and gone up, that being Wigan in 2021/22.

Goals Scored Are Important

Of course, goals are important, but perhaps not quite as vital as long as you’re getting some. Four times in the last five seasons, a promoted team has been outside the top five for goals scored, and the average position is fifth. However, it is not unusual for teams scoring a lot of goals not to go up.

Last season, Charlton and Wrexham were tenth for goals scored, and both were promoted. In 2023/24, the promoted teams were joint-fifth and fourth for goals scored, with the three leading scorers all staying down. Only 2022/23 saw the three leading scorers all go up, while in 2020/21, Blackpool were promoted despite being 14th in the goals scored table.

As for xG, it’s slightly less important. Sixth is the average placing, slightly lower than the actual scored stat, which mirrors xG against. There are a few teams that have underperformed xG and gone up – Portsmouth as champions in 2024, plus Rotherham (2022) and Blackpool (2021).

It seems that missing chances isn’t such a hindrance to promotion, but very few teams concede more than expected and go up.

Possession

Possession is overrated, and these numbers prove that. The average possession position for a promoted club over the last five years is ninth, and multiple times a club has been bottom half of the possession table and gone up. Wrexham, Charlton Athletic, Oxford United, Sheffield Wednesday, Rotherham United, Hull City and Blackpool have all been bottom half of the possession table and still been promoted to the Championship.

However, the average possession stats for a promoted side are 53%, but four clubs have been promoted with less possession than their opponents – Charlton and Wrexham last season, Hull City and Blackpool in 2021.

Where Do We Rate This Season?

This is where we get fanciful, because the numbers I’ve used are across a full season, whereas we only have a small sample size this campaign, but how are we tracking on the key data points?

In terms of xG against and goals against, we are showing promotion form. We’re joint-second for conceded goals on 11, and sixth for xG against, which is equal to or better than the final position for 33% of promoted sides over the last five seasons. We’re also outperforming our xG against (14.6 to 11 conceded), another trait of a successful side at this level.

Our xG and goals scored show a different picture. We’re currently 12th for xG, with only 13% of promoted sides being that low or lower. One of those sides, Wigan, did finish as Champions, though, but the data suggests we do need a bit of an uplift. Having said that, we are joint-eighth for goals scored, equal to or better than 27% of promoted sides (I’m rounding up here). We are also still outperforming our xG, another positive trait in terms of promotion.

Possession, which we have already said isn’t really a factor, shows a different picture. We’re at 39.6%, the lowest in the division. No promoted side has averaged less than 47.4%, nor been lower than 18th in the league standings, and still gone up.

This is interesting, by the way. In 2023/24, we should perhaps have gone up. Our xG against was bettered only by Derby County (we were 52.43), and we hugely outperformed that data, conceding just 40 goals (also second-best). In the other four seasons, the side with the second-lowest xG against went up.

We were a strong side defensively, but the first half of the season going forward was our undoing – that was the Ben House, Tyler Walker and Jack Vale injury season. We were eighth in the goals scored, outperforming xG, and we had all the ingredients.

If we’d been better in the period between beating Blackpool and sacking Mark Kennedy, where we scored just five in six, and took just five points from a possible 18, we’d have gone up. If we’d found our rhythm sooner in the early days of Michael taking over, December and January, when we scored four in nine games and took just four from 27 points, we’d have gone up.

The Raw Data