Oldham vs Newport Preview, August 7
On Saturday afternoon, after a tumultuous summer in and around Boundary Park, football takes centre stage. Oldham Athletic entertain Newport County in the first match of the 2021/2022 English Football League Two season at 3pm.
Oldham’s head coach has survived the summer — something Dino Maamria wasn’t able to in 2020, and indeed it’s the first summer since 2017 that hasn’t seen a change in the hotseat. A squad has been built that has significantly more experience than last season — over 100 league appearances per squad member, according to Soccerbase’s current listing, compared to 81 last season.
But what does that mean for Saturday? On Saturday, Newport County arrive at Boundary Park. A home season opener. Fourth in five years. Which for many teams, that would be a good thing. But Oldham have lost the previous four home openers, and their last five opening matches all told (throwing in away defeats at Millwall in 2016 and Forest Green in 2019).
Indeed, 2013 is the last time Oldham won an opening fixture of the season. It’s also Oldham’s first Welsh opposition on the opening day since Swansea visited in 2007. At least Oldham won that encounter, 2–1.
If Oldham were looking for ideal opposition to break such an abject record, Newport would probably be that. Oldham’s record against Newport is probably by some distance their best against any opponent. Admittedly, it’s only 14 matches, but a W9 D2 L3 Scored 29 Conceded 12 record is nonetheless fairly remarkable.
And the last four meetings of the teams have all ended in Oldham wins, doubles being done in each of the last two seasons. Another neat feature of this weekend’s fixture is that Newport were the visitors the last time fans were allowed into Boundary Park for a league match, in February 2019.
So, what will Saturday look like? The average bookmaker implied probability for Oldham to win is slightly ahead of that for Newport — or at least it was on Monday when I collected the data. It’s now swung a little in favour of Newport. That’s more in line with my own model, which is described a little bit here, and gives Oldham a 34% chance to win, with Newport at 42%.
And why not? Newport’s is a squad with a similar average age (26), but with almost 70 appearances per player more, and 11 goals per player more, too. It’s not much more of a settled squad than Oldham’s, with on average a player having been there for 1.7 seasons to Oldham’s 1.4, but with more experience given age, and more goals per appearance, it’s clear that Newport are stronger.
How much, then, will home advantage matter, especially with fans returning? The simple answer is yes it should. There’s been a mass of evidence accumulated in the time since Oldham last faced Newport with fans in February 2019 (including some I did!), and it all points to the fact that home fans make a difference.
Without fans in stadiums, home teams won about 3% less, and away teams about 3% more. Those kinds of margins could make the difference especially when the differences (according to the bookmakers at any rate) are so small.
But it’s especially difficult to say in the case of Oldham, given that whilst fans are returning to Boundary Park, Push The Boundary is organising a boycott of home matches. The club has opened the North Stand eventually, and it remains to be seen to what extent that appeases some fans and leads to their return.
But what, concretely, can be expected? It looks like a tight game given the way each team is likely to set up, given the bookmaker odds (which are very reliable as forecasts, again plenty of evidence on that). But equally, what look like tight games with a couple of early goals can quite quickly become routs — that’s football.
Below is the full set of forecasts for all League Two matches this weekend, and the 8th row is Oldham vs Newport (sadly, Reuters abbreviations mean it isn’t OLDvsNEW). The columns towards the right of the table are scoreline probabilities — what is the likelihood of each actual scoreline?
The most likely scoreline is a 1–1 draw, with an 11% chance, and the next most likely scoreline is Newport nicking a 2–1 win (9%), followed by Oldham doing so, and also Newport winning 1–0 as they did in 2018.
Higher scorelines are possible, and indeed the last three matches between the teams have featured 16 goals. It seems distinctly unlikely that there will be another goalfest tomorrow — but it is not impossible.
Most likely is an underwhelming 1–1 draw, though.
