Gillingham vs Newport County
Our model puts a Gillingham win at 56% in this League Two fixture — a moderate lean. Expected goals run 1.66 to 0.86.
What this probability has been worth
A number is worth what it has been worth. Across 1,564 predictions published before kick-off and scored against the result afterwards, the calls we priced between 55% and 65% came in 52.1% of the time — 290 fixtures in that band. That is 7.5 points below what the model claimed, so read this figure as optimistic: in this range it has been saying more than it could support. We publish the gap rather than quietly shading the number, because a record that only shows its good bands is not a record.
Where we disagree with the market
Bookmakers price Newport County at 3.35, which implies about 29.9%. Our model has it at 19.5% — 10.4 points lower. That is a wide gap, and it is worth being plain about what it means: it is not a claim that the price is wrong and we are right. It means two methods that usually agree have landed far apart on this one, and only the result will say which of them read it better.
Finding the target
Newport County struggles to hit the target: 29.1% of their shots are on goal over their last matches. The average across the sides we have figures for is 34%. Accuracy is not the same as scoring — it says how much of a side's shooting is worth a goalkeeper's attention, which is the part that does not swing as wildly from week to week as goals do.
Early or late
83.3% of Gillingham's goals have come after the break, against 57.1% for the sides we measure, over 12 goals. A side that scores this late is usually one that grows into matches or finishes them stronger than it starts — and one whose half-time score says less than usual about the result.