What’s On It

The Two-Leg Picture

Saturday evening at the Toughsheet is the first leg only. The return is at Valley Parade on Wednesday 14 May at 20:00 BST. Whichever side advances on aggregate goes to Wembley on Sunday 24 May. Higher-seeded Bradford host the second leg; first-leg home advantage sits with fifth-placed Bolton.

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: Stockport (3rd, 77), Bradford (4th, 77 on goal difference), Bolton (5th, 75), Stevenage (6th, 75 on goal difference) — three points covering four play-off teams.

Form & the Underlying Numbers

Bolton’s last six: one win, three draws, two defeats. The highlight was a 5-1 demolition of Stevenage on 14 April, but they lost 2-3 at home to Luton on the final day and drew 1-1 at Bradford a week earlier. Bradford’s last six: two wins, three draws, one defeat — steadier. They won 2-1 at Exeter on the final day and drew 1-1 at home to Bolton in the H2H seven days earlier. Both sides enter the play-offs with mixed momentum, but Bradford’s recent run is marginally more consistent.

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

Bolton lost only two home games all season (W13-D8-L2). Bradford were even better at home (W15-D5-L3 at Valley Parade). The away records flip — Bolton drew ten on the road, the most in the division; Bradford lost ten away from home.

When the goals come

Players to Watch

Bolton’s attack is led by Mason Burstow (12 goals) and Sam Dalby (10 goals), while Amario Cozier-Duberry has chipped in eight goals and ten assists — among the most productive creator-finisher hybrids in the division. Johnny Kenny has six goals from 13 league appearances and scored in the recent 1-1 H2H draw at Valley Parade. For Bradford, midfielder Antoni Sarcevic and forward Bobby Pointon each have ten goals from open play; Stephen Humphrys adds seven. Max Power, with 69 key passes (sixth in the division) and five assists, is the creative hub from deep. The contest between Cozier-Duberry’s chance creation and Power’s deep distribution will set the tempo.

Mason Burstow (Bolton)

Amario Cozier-Duberry (Bolton)

Antoni Sarcevic (Bradford)

Bobby Pointon (Bradford)

Head to Head

The two League One meetings this season were tight draws. At the Toughsheet in November, it finished 0-0 — one of Bolton’s four home blanks across the season. At Valley Parade on 25 April, Johnny Kenny put Bolton ahead in the 72nd minute (assist Mason Burstow) before Kayden Jackson levelled for Bradford eight minutes later (assist Curtis Tilt). Aggregate over 180 minutes: 1-1. These sides have not met outside this season in the last five years, Bradford having been in League Two. The two-leg format adds intrigue — a narrow first-leg result could leave everything to play for at Valley Parade.

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

Both models lean Bolton at home for the first leg — they share the read that Bolton’s underlying goal expectation is meaningfully higher than Bradford’s. The reason is the central tension of this tie: Bolton’s xG difference of +8.99 across the season is the third-best in League One; Bradford’s -2.33 is the lowest of the four play-off teams. The table favours Bradford, who finished higher by converting decisive moments. The xG and the model favour Bolton, who out-created opponents but converted less ruthlessly. The L1 Poisson model is brand new (deployed 7 May) with a near-zero Dixon-Coles rho — meaning low scores aren’t unusually clustered in League One; an independent-Poisson assumption fits the division well. Leg 2 will be modelled separately once the first leg’s data is in the books — running it now would use stale rolling-form features.

1X2 — model probabilities (leg 1)

The chart below shows the calibrated logistic-regression model’s read on the leg-1 1X2: Bolton favoured at 49% to win at home, Bradford 31%, draw 20%. The Poisson + Dixon-Coles goals model agrees on direction: Bolton 46%, draw 25%, Bradford 29%. Both models agree on direction.

Conditional-modal scoreline

Taking the LR model’s most-likely outcome (Bolton win) and selecting the most-likely scoreline from the Poisson + Dixon-Coles grid restricted to home-win cells, the conditional-modal prediction is 1-0 Bolton. Lambdas (expected goals per side): Bolton 1.53, Bradford 1.17 — the goals model and the LR agree on direction. 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

Both models lean Bolton at the Toughsheet, and Bolton’s xG profile across the season agrees. But the H2H draws and Bradford’s clutch finishing suggest a tight first leg — a narrow Bolton win or another draw is the most likely outcome, leaving everything to play for at Valley Parade. Bradford have to bring something away from Lancashire.

Models: leagueone_lr_v1_cal (Platt-calibrated logistic regression with player-rating features) and leagueone_poisson_v1 (Poisson + Dixon-Coles). BeyondThePrem does not provide betting advice; probabilistic reads are presented for analytical interest only.