With Championship football near a return following the final international break of 2025, now feels like an ideal time to check in on the expected points table and assess how teams are performing based on the underlying statistics.
The league table doesn’t lie… except when it does.
Now 15 matchdays into the 2025-26 Championship season, things are shaping up nicely. But as supporters of most clubs will tell you, there have been elements of both good fortune and misfortune in games this season that aren’t entirely reflected in the number of points won in the standings.
So, is the Championship table lying to us?
Well, the true answer is quite obviously no. Points are won and lost whether teams deserve the eventual outcome in matches or not. But this is where the Opta expected points model can help tell the real story of those matches. What could the Championship table look like after 15 games in 2025-26 had matches ended as the underlying data suggests they should have?
Our expected points model simulates the number of goals scored by each side in each match based on the expected goals (xG) value of every shot taken. It then uses the simulated number of goals to determine the match outcome (win/draw/loss). Each match is simulated 10,000 times. The expected points for each team in each match can then be calculated based on the proportion of simulations they win/draw/lose.
This is of course not an exact science, as xG data doesn’t include a lot of factors, such as game state and dangerous periods of possession that don’t lead to shots. Nevertheless, it’s still a decent barometer for how teams are performing this season.
The first thing to mention is that Coventry City absolutely have been the best team in the Championship this season. They lead the league by five points, collecting 34 of a possible 45, and lead the expected points table (30.1). There are more intriguing stories to be told around the chasing pack, though.
Middlesbrough sit second in the table but are now without a permanent manager after Rob Edwards departed for Premier League club Wolves. They’ve won 29 points from 15 games, but the underlying data suggests that tally might be fortunate. Their expected points total is just 21.6, which would place them eighth in the Championship table. The story is similar with Stoke City, who drop from third to ninth when comparing real-life points (27) with expected points (20.7).
Boro (+7.3) and Stoke (+6.2) are two of the Championship’s biggest overachievers this season, but they both fall below Hull City. The Tigers have won 25 points in 2025-26 and rank fifth in the table, but their expected points total of 17.1 is 7.9 lower than reality. They have overperformed at both ends of the pitch, with their goals tally (26) 4.8 higher than their xG total (21.2) and their goals conceded total (24) 5.1 under their xG against figure (29.1). How sustainable that’ll be over a season is a question that’ll be answered in May.
Birmingham City make a big jump from 11th in the real-life Championship standings to third in the expected points table, while Southampton, Blackburn Rovers and Watford all move from places in the bottom half to the top seven.
The biggest underachievers have been Sheffield United, whose performances should put them on a par with Bristol City (who are eighth in reality) but see them sit 14 places and 13 points beneath them in the Championship standings after 15 games. The Blades’ difference of 10.1 points between their expected value (20.1) and their real-life total (10) is the biggest of any side in the league, ignoring Sheffield Wednesday’s 10-point deduction.
Sheffield United have scored just 11 goals from an xG of 20.0 and conceded 26 times from shots totalling 20.6 xG at the other end of the pitch – no team have underperformed either to a more significant degree than them.
Of course, the final league table will be based on points actually won, not those on spreadsheets. However, with 31 matchdays of the Championship campaign left to play, looking at the underlying data to see where teams could be placed right now with a mixture of some luck, better defending and more consistency in front of goal offers an insight into how the rest of the season could pan out.
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Expected Points: Is the Championship Table Lying to Us After 15 Games of 2025-26? Opta Analyst.
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