Clockwise from upper left: Leicester City, Leeds United, Ipswich Town, and Southampton all compete for the Championship’s top two slots. Here’s who the Opta supercomputer believes will receive them.
The race for promotion to the Premier League appears to be coming down to the wire; here’s who the Opta supercomputer predicts will finish in the top two in the Championship.Ipswich Town are now third with nine games remaining. They’re four points behind leaders Leicester City and only one point behind Leeds United.Opta analysts have now crunched the figures to determine who will finish first and second, as well as who will advance to the playoffs.They feel Town will narrowly miss out, with Leicester and Leeds claiming the crucial top two positions and the Blues finishing third.Opta’s current estimates for automatic promotion from the Championship.
Their projection is as follows: “Heading into their final game of 2023,

Leicester were being given a 91.3% chance of winning the Championship title.”Since the turn of the year, however, they have won 20 points from 12 games, the fifth most in the league during that time frame.” Conversely, Leeds’ form has been superb in 2024. They’ve won 34 of a possible 36 points, which is 10 more than any other side in the competition at the time.”After this weekend, Leeds are expected to finish in the top two 75.6% of the time, compared to 21.6% on December 29. They had a 1.5% probability of winning the championship back then, but that has since increased to 28.6%.Leeds United has been in spectacular form in 2024.Ipswich’s automatic promotion odds have dropped to 25.5% following their defeat in Cardiff on Saturday, down from 49.4% previously.”Despite their weekend victory over Sunderland and a game in hand on their promotion opponents, Southampton appears to be destined for the play-offs. According to the Opta supercomputer’s 10,000 current simulations, they finish third to sixth 92.7% of the time. “As it stands, their most likely opponents in the play-offs will be Ipswich, West Brom, and Coventry City.”This would leave Town’s old rivals Norwich City just missing out, with a seventh-place finish expected.Town would then meet last season’s beaten play-off finalists Coventry in this year’s play-off semi-finals, with the winners facing either the Saints or West Brom.