Winter Is Drawing In.

Firstly, and gratifyingly, we were right. There HAS been more draws recently. Look at the graph below; the red bars are home wins, the green are away, and the black bars (and line) are draws. Look at the rise in the amount of draws in December and January; the black line shows the month by month figure, running alongside the cumulative figure. As the season pans out, the results are regressing to a mean (I ought to add, this graph was drawn before Friday and Saturday's game - it would look more skewed towards Home Wins by a small amount after those) of balance - though I would expect home wins to be a little more prevalent than they are; that might prove to be the case as the season goes on.

So is that normal? Is that what we expect? I took the time to plot the same graph for the two previous seasons, and if you look at these two, although the details may be different on each, there's a few patterns that are worth mentioning. There is a spike. In January and February, there are more drawn games than other months (January especially) and, generally, the amount of home wins reaches a point and stays pretty consistent around it (above 40%), whatever happens with the aways and draws.

I wondered, as you might well yourself, as to why this would be. I can't say for sure why more games are drawn in January; but I would imagine the following things contribute. Christmas takes a lot out of teams. Playing a lot of games in tough conditions must be more tiring than other times of the year, so come January, the players are recuperating a bit, but don't have the drive to go for wins as much; the conditions would probably generate more injuries, too. The transfer window, too, can take a lot out of teams, either in terms of losing players, and thus ability, or gaining players, but losing a bit of the team-work that had gone before. It is probably the month that 'the split' becomes most apparent for that reason - when the better teams strengthen, it leaves the rest of the division trailing a little; and less good (more evenly matched) teams are more likely to draw; particularly as this is the time when it becomes more obvious that for some teams, there's nothing to play for this season.

So yes, there has been a lot of draws recently. We should've been expecting it. It won't last. Come February or March, there will be a push towards home wins again, and the 'cream' will rise to the top. Tomorrow is the 31st January; the last day of the draw-heavy month. Hopefully, on Saturday, Town will begin to find themselves on the positive end of results - 12 draws is the 2nd most in the league - I'm looking at you, Scunthorpe (and also Walsall).