League One starts on Saturday 15 August. We did this for the Championship, so here it is for the third tier: two predictions of how the table finishes in May, written down before a ball is kicked. What the bookmakers reckon, and what our model reckons.
There is no third opinion this time — my son TigerMat did a Championship table but not a League One one. Two is still enough for the thing that matters, which is that both are on the record now and both get marked in May.
The bookmakers. No bookmaker publishes a predicted table, so this one is built rather than quoted. We took the outright title market and the relegation market, stripped the margin out of both, and ranked every club by title chance minus relegation chance. Five clubs have no title price at all and are placed on the relegation market alone; Leicester have no relegation price, which tells you something in itself. The ordering is ours, the prices underneath it are the market’s.
Our model. A squad-quality ranking, not a match prediction. It scores each club on the output of the players who were there last season, then normalises across divisions so clubs arriving from the Championship and from League Two can be compared with everyone else on the same scale. It is not our match-prediction model, which has no view on 2026/27 at all and will not produce a single fixture prediction until both sides have played five games.
Worth stating plainly, because it is not the same as the Championship. The Championship widened its play-offs to sixth-to-eighth this season. League One did not. Here it remains two automatic promotions and a play-off from third to sixth.
And League One relegates four clubs, not three. That is a meaningfully harsher bottom end than the division above, and it is why the relegation market carries so much more weight in the ordering below.
| Pos | Bookmakers | Our model |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leicester | Leicester |
| 2 | Sheffield Wednesday | Oxford United |
| 3 | Luton | Milton Keynes Dons |
| 4 | Huddersfield | Luton |
| 5 | Plymouth | Plymouth |
| 6 | Milton Keynes Dons | Wycombe |
| 7 | Bradford | Bromley |
| 8 | Stockport County | Peterborough |
| 9 | Wycombe | Leyton Orient |
| 10 | Blackpool | Bradford |
| 11 | Reading | Barnsley |
| 12 | Wigan | Huddersfield |
| 13 | Barnsley | Reading |
| 14 | Mansfield Town | Stockport County |
| 15 | Oxford United | Notts County |
| 16 | Doncaster | AFC Wimbledon |
| 17 | Stevenage | Mansfield Town |
| 18 | Peterborough | Wigan |
| 19 | Notts County | Doncaster |
| 20 | Leyton Orient | Sheffield Wednesday |
| 21 | Cambridge United | Burton Albion |
| 22 | Burton Albion | Cambridge United |
| 23 | Bromley | Blackpool |
| 24 | AFC Wimbledon | Stevenage |
Automatic promotionPlay-offs (3rd to 6th)Relegation (four down)
| Team | Bookies | Our model | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sheffield Wednesday | 2 | 20 | 18 |
| Bromley | 23 | 7 | 16 |
| Oxford United | 15 | 2 | 13 |
| Blackpool | 10 | 23 | 13 |
| Leyton Orient | 20 | 9 | 11 |
| Huddersfield | 4 | 12 | 8 |
The two tables sit 5.9 places apart on average. For the Championship that figure was 4.1. League One is where the market and the model fall out properly.
- Sheffield Wednesday is the widest gap either of us has produced in any division: eighteen places. The bookmakers make them second favourites to go straight back up. Our model, reading the output of the squad that was there last season, has them twentieth. This is the single clearest case of our method’s main weakness — it scores the players who were at a club last season, and a summer of change is invisible to it. Treat our number here with more caution than most.
- Bromley is the same argument in reverse, sixteen places the other way. Our model has them seventh on last season’s League Two output, adjusted down for the division. The bookmakers have them second favourites for relegation.
- Oxford United come down from the Championship and our model has them second. The market has them fifteenth — barely inside the top two-thirds.
- Blackpool we have going down; the market has them tenth.
- Leyton Orient we have ninth and the market has twentieth — eleven places — and they open at home to Sheffield Wednesday on the first Saturday. Two of the four widest disagreements on this page, in the same fixture, on day one. One of us is going to look daft early.
Both methods agree on four of the six play-off places and on two of the four relegation places. On everything else, take your pick.
Headline measure — average position error. For each of the 24 clubs we take how many places the prediction missed by, and average it across the table. Lowest number wins.
Band hits. Champion, the two automatic promotions, the play-off six, and the relegated four. A straight count of how many each got right.
Set now, before anyone knows anything, so nobody gets to choose a flattering yardstick in May. Same rule we published for the Championship.
- The transfer window is open. Our model counts players who have left and misses players who have arrived. Sheffield Wednesday above is the sharpest illustration of why that matters.
- The market ordering is derived, not quoted. No bookmaker published this table; we built it from two of their markets.
- The odds are a snapshot, both books as at 21 July. League One prices move less than Championship ones, but they will have moved.
- Five clubs have no title price and one has no relegation price. Those are placed on the market that does exist for them, which is a real limitation at both ends of the table.
- This is not betting advice, and nothing here suggests any price is wrong. Two predictions, recorded, to be marked in May.
Predictions sealed 7 August 2026, before the opening fixture. Both tables are stored unchanged so the end-of-season scoring reads the original file rather than anything rewritten after the fact.
