One of the biggest trends across the final day of football in many leagues is to look to get against already-relegated teams. This trend isn’t as strong in League One over the last four seasons, but when grouping together the three EFL leagues, it is a strong trend.

Indeed, there has been one recent occasion of an already-promoted team playing an already-relegated team on final day, which was last season’s match between Derby and Carlisle, this ended in a comfortable 2-0 win to Derby.

Birmingham have already achieved all of their goals for the season, promotion, the title, the third-tier points record, and, potentially, the overall Football League points record, but they are also professional footballers who want to go out and win.

Ostensibly, they are streets ahead of a Cambridge team who already know their fate is to return to the fourth tier. Undoubtedly, they will also want to win the match and send the home fans away for the summer with a win against a very strong Birmingham team, but they will probably have to be lucky as well as good to do so.

One of Blues’ few losses did actually come away to the only team below Cambridge in the league, but other than that, Birmingham have won away at every team from 10th downwards, excpet for 1-1 draws at Northampton and Mansfield.

Blues are a bigger price than one would’ve expected for this, due to the lack of jeopardy for them in this game, but this looks like an opportunity to take a much better team at a decent price for the acca.

It is a rare event for two already-relegated teams to face each other on the final day, something which we haven’t seen in the last four EFL final days.

However, the effect is similar to both teams having nothing to play for, for which there is a great deal of information, and in League One, it is the best recipe for finding goals on the final day. The average number of goals in a “nothing to play for” matches in the last four seasons is 3.21. Over the last four years, 65% of matches that have had nothing on the line have gone over 2.5 goals; the same matches actually all went over 3.5 goals as well, so when there are goals in a match, there are generally lots of them.

This seems perfect for a Crawley side who have been one of the entertainers of League One this season. It hasn’t led to their safety in the end, but they certainly contributed a lot to the division. They have scored 55 goals and conceded 82, so their matches have produced an average of just over three goals per game. This is a trend that they are currently following very well with a 3-0 win last time, a 3-1 win before that, a 0-0 against Birmingham, but then a run of 1-3, 1-3, 3-4, 4-0 scorelines in the league.

Shrewsbury have been less exciting in terms of goals, but there is no reason why they should look to poop this party. They won away at Barnsley last week, scoring twice away from home, albeit they lost 4-1 to Northampton the week before, but at least there have been goals in their games of late as well.

One of the strongest trends in the last four EFL final days was that in League Two, when a team was “playing for something”, they generally got what they needed. In 24 matches where this was the case in post-COVID League Two, 14 wins and nine draws were registered by the teams who had something to play for.

In this case, we can also combine that trend with the one that goes against teams that have already been relegated. Brunton Park is going to bid farewell to league football for at least a season after a disastrously planned campaign, and though sentiment towards Mark Hughes doesn’t seem to be overly negative, the fans are distraught about their club, playing Derby in League One this time one year ago, will now be planning trips to Truro City, which is quite the excursion in itself.

There is some slight concern about the Carlisle team wanting to put on a show for the fans, but Salford’s form has been excellent of late, and they need a result to secure their top-seven status. They are currently level on points with Grimsby, but with a superior goal difference, with Chesterfield and Colchester also able to leapfrog Salford Even if Salford draw this match, Karl Robinson’s men will be going out for the win.

Salford have lost one in nine, an inexplicable home defeat to Accrington, and they are unbeaten in five on their travels coming into this match.

Piling in on the “playing for something” trend in League Two, but also paying respect to Chesterfield’s flying end to the season, they look good value to go to Accrington, who are mathematically safe from relegation, and get the three points.

Chesterfield can qualify for the play-offs with a win as long as Salford or Grimsby don’t win, and the trend, as quoted in the Carlisle v Salford pick, is that League Two teams that have “something to play for” have a really high win percentage, 14 of 24 matches (58%) that fulfil this criteria, in the last four years, have seen the team with something on the line win on final day.

However, Chesterfield would’ve been favourites for this clash even without the added motivation. They have been well thought of by the market all season, and although they have disappointed in the season as a whole, they were market leaders for the division at kick-off in August, they have come storming into the home straight.

Chesterfield have lost only once in the last 12 League Two matches, and although there are probably too many draws in that run (four, but three in their last five), it still shows a level of consistency that was oddly lacking in the first two-thirds of the season. They have scored three or more times in three of their last four matches, and Accrington have recently conceded four to Fleetwood and three to Tranmere at home.