What does a better xG method say about Huddersfield Town's promotion chances?

In 2021, football analyst and data scientist Ben Torvaney attempted to answer a straightforward question: “Does xG really tell us everything about team performance?”

For the many skeptics of expected goals formulas and their ability to project future performances (or assess past ones), the answer would be a resounding “no.” But for some of the smartest people working in football – like Torvaney, who would go on to run numbers for AC Milan, and currently works for the consulting business of pivotal former Liverpool analyst Ian Graham – the answer wasn’t so clearcut. Torvaney found that, yes, expected goals proved a better tool for predicting outcomes than actual goals – but that combining the two proved a better tool than either.

Specifically, Torvaney’s research showed that mixing the two at a ratio of 70 percent xG and 30 percent actual goal differential provided a meaningful improvement on just relying on xG. That methodology has since been used to power Premier League analysis by statistically-inclined writers like ESPN’s Ryan O’Hanlon, who’s given it the (rather forgettable) shorthand “adjusted goal difference.”

But while it’s not hard to come by analytics-driven projections for League One – just ask any bit of Internet content featuring a “supercomputer” – Torvaney’s approach hasn’t specifically been applied to League One and Huddersfield Town’s chances of promotion in 2025. Until now, that is. Here’s how the current League One table would look as sorted by adjusted goal difference, with xG numbers from FotMob:

And here’s the table in bar graph form:

For Huddersfield Town supporters looking for optimism in the promotion chase, there’s good news and bad news here. Let’s start with the good: with the Terriers boasting the division’s third-best Adj. GD (and second-best expected GD) and already having opened up a six-point gap to seventh in the actual League One table, Michael Duff’s team currently appear much more likely to crash the top-two than slip out of the playoffs. 

With current sixth-place team Reading dramatically overperforming its xG thus far – Exhibit A being Town’s 2-1 defeat away to the Royals on Sep. 28 despite huge advantages in shots and xG – adj. GD believes that even if Town were passed by Stockport and Barnsley, to finish outside the top-six the Terriers would also have to be passed by one of Bolton, Lincoln, or Blackpool. While Wanderers and Steve Bruce’s Tangerines have performed marginally better than their goal-scoring records suggest, adj. GD would argue none of the three deserve to be more than a place higher up the table than they currently are. Barring both a massive improvement in performance from multiple teams behind them and an equally massive downturn in performance from Town, the Terriers should be able to find their way to the playoffs.

But of course every Town supporter up to and including Kevin Nagle himself has their sights set on automatic promotion. Here, too, there’s some good news – while adj. GD likes Wrexham far more than regular xG does, it still views the division’s current third-place side as a tier below the other true contenders for the top-two. While there’s likely reasons beyond good fortune Wrexham have overperformed their xG –  for starters, goalkeeper Arthur Okonkwo has been outstanding, stopping a higher percentage of shots faced than any other keeper in the division by some distance – the difference between Wrexham’s results and their underlying numbers is by far the widest in the league. In the long run, Town might have to worry more about holding off undervalued Stockport than catching the team immediately ahead of them. 

What might prove more of a challenge than edging out Wrexham or Stockport, though, is reeling in high-flying Wycombe. Matt Bloomfield’s Wanderers could be a textbook case in the superiority of adj. GD over a pure xG model – according to the latter, the current league-leaders would actually be the fourth-best team in the division, and due for regression. But adj. GD doesn’t view Wycombe’s lethal composure in front of goal as an accident, and rates them as the clear auto-promotion favorites (if not actual challengers to Birmingham for the division title). Between their current table position and thus-far exceptional ability to convert chances into goal, the Opta Analyst model gives Wycombe a 79.6% chance of promotion to Town’s 13.84%. 

But the guess here is that Town has better odds than that model implies. At some point Wycombe’s finishing almost has to cool off – Wanderers are currently outscoring their xG by 15 full goals, something only three League One teams have managed for a full season over the past five years. (One of them, interestingly enough, was Duff’s 2022-2023 Barnsley team.) Town’s away schedule will be easier in the back half of the season, having already played away to half the adj. GD top-eight, including both the likely champions and the division’s best home team in Wrexham. Town’s obvious need for a striker (and Nagle’s purported willingness to spend) means there’s arguably a clearer path for Huddersfield than for Wycombe for meaningful improvements to the squad in January. And perhaps most importantly, Duff has a track record of coaxing improvement from his sides as their seasons progress – a pattern Town fans have already seen play out in their team’s recovery from its early-season pratfalls against Northampton and Blackpool.

Those struggles mean that at seven points, the gap between Town and Wycombe is already substantial, and Wanderers’ goalscoring prowess – however fortunate or not – indicates closing it won’t be easy. And of course, this is football — any attempt to predict the future, however numerically clever, is little more than an educated guess. Town could leapfrog both Wycombe and Birmingham to become League One champions. Town could collapse and finish 9th.

But based on Town’s position in the table and excellent form of late – one notably not fueled by xG overperformance – the best guess we have is that Town should secure a top-six place. And if a City or Wanderers slip becomes enough of a slump that a spot in the automatic promotion places becomes available, Town could be the club most likely to seize it.