What’s On It

The Two-Leg Picture

Saturday afternoon at the Lamex is the first leg only. The return is at Edgeley Park on Tuesday 13 May at 20:00 BST. Whichever side advances on aggregate goes to Wembley on Sunday 24 May. Higher-seeded Stockport host the second leg; first-leg home advantage sits with sixth-placed Stevenage.

The Final Table

How League One finished after 46 games. Lincoln took the title at 103; Cardiff are auto-promoted second on 91. Behind them, four sides separated by three points fight for the last promotion ticket — Stockport (3rd, 77), Bradford (4th, 77 on goal difference), Bolton (5th, 75), Stevenage (6th, 75 on goal difference).

Form & the Underlying Numbers

Stevenage arrive with three wins, two draws and one defeat in their last six. The only loss was a 5-1 thrashing at Bolton on 14 April, after which they steadied with a 2-2 home draw against champions Lincoln, a 1-0 win over Barnsley, a 1-1 draw at Doncaster, and a 1-0 home win over Wigan to finish sixth on the final day. All three of their last-six wins came by 1-0 — a tight, low-scoring profile. Stockport’s last six reads three wins, one draw and two defeats, both defeats at home — to Mansfield (0-1) and Port Vale (1-2). Their attacking output is higher (3-1, 3-3 wins) but defensive lapses have crept in. The contrast in profiles is stark: Stevenage grind out low-scoring wins; Stockport trade blows.

Last six matches — side by side

Rolling xG — 10-match window

League One xG coverage is partial this season — these charts use the matches we have data for. Treat them as directional rather than complete.

xG scatter — for vs against

Each dot is a fixture: xG produced (x-axis) against xG conceded (y-axis). Below the diagonal = outperforming the opposition on chances.

Home vs away split

Stevenage finished with the league’s best home defensive record — 13 goals conceded across 23 games at the Lamex. Stockport are the more balanced road side: 9-7-7 away, 33 goals scored on the road.

When the goals come

Players to Watch

Jamie Reid is Stevenage’s talisman: 14 goals from a team that scored only 49 in the league — he carries roughly a third of their attacking output. Harvey White, with a team-high average rating of 7.25 and six assists, is the creative hub and Stevenage’s leading key-passer (72). For Stockport, Kyle Wootton leads the line with 18 goals, while Oliver Norwood pulls the strings from midfield with 11 assists and a league-leading 92 key passes — no L1 player created more chances this season. Jack Diamond’s six goals and seven assists add width. The visitors have greater individual firepower, but Stevenage’s collective defensive organisation has nullified them twice already this season.

Jamie Reid (Stevenage)

Harvey White (Stevenage)

Kyle Wootton (Stockport County)

Oliver Norwood (Stockport County)

Head to Head

Stevenage have won both league meetings this season. At Edgeley Park in December, they raced into a 2-0 lead through Chem Campbell and Jamie Reid before Kyle Wootton pulled one back; Louis Thompson restored the two-goal cushion two minutes later for a 3-1 win. At the Lamex in February, Stockport led through Adama Sidibeh, but Carl Piergianni and Matt Phillips turned it around. Luther James-Wildin assisted both Stevenage goals in the away leg. The two-leg structure changes the dynamic: Stevenage must build a lead before the return at Edgeley Park, where Stockport have lost only six home league games all season.

Last six meetings

Goal-scoring trend — xG vs actual

How well each side’s goal output is tracking their expected-goals profile across 25/26. Above the line = scoring above xG; below = under-performing.

The Model’s Honest Reading

The two models disagree on leg 1. The calibrated LR — which uses 30 features including season-long player ratings and form — gives Stockport a 49% win probability, Stevenage 34%, and the draw 17%. The new L1 Poisson model, trained on rolling five-game form across six seasons of L1 fixtures, splits it almost evenly: 38% home, 26% draw, 37% away, with a 1-1 modal scoreline in the unrestricted grid. The conditional-modal pick (LR-restricted argmax of the Poisson grid) is 0-1 Stockport. The Poisson’s Dixon-Coles rho is essentially zero (-0.0008), meaning no special clustering at low scores is expected — independent Poisson is a respectable fit for L1. The LR trusts the season-long data; the Poisson gives more weight to recent form. The truth probably lies somewhere in between — and a two-leg tie absorbs single-game noise.

1X2 — model probabilities (leg 1)

The chart below shows the calibrated logistic-regression model’s read on Saturday’s leg 1: Stockport favoured at 49% to win away, Stevenage 34%, draw 17%. The Poisson + Dixon-Coles goals model paints a different leg-1 picture — Stevenage 38%, Draw 26%, Stockport 37%, essentially a coin flip with a slight home edge. The two models do agree on leg 2 (both favour Stockport at home, LR 55% / Poisson 48%); they disagree on leg 1.

Conditional-modal scoreline

Taking the LR model’s most-likely outcome (Stockport win) and selecting the most-likely scoreline from the Poisson + Dixon-Coles grid restricted to away-win cells, the conditional-modal prediction is 0-1 Stockport. The next two most probable Stockport-win scorelines are 1-2 and 0-2. We use this conditional approach rather than the raw Poisson modal because the unrestricted argmax of a tight scoreline grid almost always lands on 1-1, which would self-contradict the LR’s clear 1X2 lean.

How has the model been doing this season?

Track record across the full 25/26 League One campaign:

The Verdict

The conditional-modal pick is 0-1 Stockport, and the LR’s season-long view is hard to ignore: the underlying-numbers gap is real. But Stevenage’s home record and head-to-head dominance create genuine doubt. A narrow away win is the most likely single outcome, but a draw or a Stevenage lead would not be a surprise. Leg 1 is the hinge — Stockport need to bring something back to Edgeley Park.

Models: leagueone_lr_v1_cal (Platt-calibrated logistic regression with player-rating features) and leagueone_poisson_v1 (Poisson + Dixon-Coles, ρ = -0.0008, trained 7 May 2026 on six seasons of L1 fixtures). BeyondThePrem does not provide betting advice; probabilistic reads are presented for analytical interest only.