Southampton will hate Supercomputer's EFL Championship play-off prediction | OneFootball

Championship clubs return to action on Good Friday after the international break, and Opta's supercomputer is predicting its winners and losers.

The Championship returns to the schedule following the international break this weekend, and the Opta Supercomputer has a good idea of who may be successful come the end of the season.

There's all to play for at the top of the Championship, when teams return to action this weekend following the end of the last international break of the season. Middlesbrough and Millwall kick things off on Good Friday lunchtime at The Riverside Stadium, with Hull City travelling to Oxford United, Wrexham away to West Bromwich Albion, and Coventry City entertaining Derby County in the evening match. Neither Ipswich Town nor Southampton are in action, due to Southampton's upcoming FA Cup quarter-final against Arsenal.

Coventry City are nine points clear at the top of the table and eleven clear of third place, and barring a spectacular collapse they should be on course for a return to the Premier League following an absence of 25 years. But below them, there's still all to play for, with just two points separating second-placed Middlesbrough from fourth-placed Ipswich and six points separating fifth-placed Hull City from eighth-placed Derby County.

Opta Supercomputer predicts disappointment for Southampton at the end of this season

The Opta Supercomputer maintains running probability scores for all clubs in the Championship throughout the season, and it's worth taking a look at, as teams prepare to return for the final leg of 2025-26.

The Supercomputer feels that Coventry's return to the Premier League is all but guaranteed. It gives them a 99.94% chance of getting promoted at the end of this season, meaning that a return is pretty much already guaranteed.

But below them, those percentages start to drop pretty quickly. None of the clubs below the Sky Blues have a greater than 50% chance of getting promoted, although Middlesbrough are the favourites to join Coventry in the second automatic promotion place.

And below the top two, there's bad news for the division's form team from the Supercomputer. It predicts that, despite a run of form which has seen them rise from 15th place to sixth since the middle of January, Southampton are not its favourites to win promotion through the play-offs, with Millwall given an 84.22% chance of getting up via these means, while the Saints' is 68.28%.

Southampton are in better form than Millwall, but they also have a more difficult run-in

Southampton fans may be a little confused at their chances of going up through the play-offs being considered lower than Millwall's, given their form over the last couple of months. Since losing 2-1 at home to Hull City in the middle of January, they've had a run of nine wins and three draws in the Championship, as well as progressing to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup with wins against Leicester City and Fulham. It's been a stunning turnaround in fortunes under Tonda Eckert, who replaced Will Still as their head coach at the start of November.

But Millwall's form over the same period of time hasn't been a great deal worse than Southampton's. Over the same twelve games, they have won seven, drawn two and lost three, and there have been some impressive results amongst these, including wins away to fellow promotion challengers Wrexham and Hull City, a 3-0 home pasting of Birmingham City and a highly creditable 1-1 draw at Ipswich in their last match before the international break.

Previous form can only go so far in understanding why Southampton rank lower than Millwall - as well as Ipswich and Hull City - though. Four of their remaining seven league games are at home, but they have some tricky fixtures to come, including a home game against Derby County and a trip to Hull City, while their penultimate game of the season is at home against Ipswich Town.

Millwall only have three home matches left, but their run-in does look slightly more straightforward than Southampton's. They still have to play two of the current bottom three, Leicester City and Oxford United, and none of their opponents in their remaining fixtures are currently higher than 10th-placed Norwich City. In addition to this, their higher league position should give them a more favourable fixture in the semi-finals of the play-offs, so long as they can stay where they are in the table.

But the Championship has been nothing if not unpredictable this season, and the consistency shown by Southampton over the last couple of months could be the inspiration for them to defy the Opta Supercomputer's predictions. It may have been disrupted slightly by this final international break, but the Saints remain the team in the best form in the whole of the division, and that could prove to be extremely valuable as the 2025-26 season reaches its closing straits.