Our record in different parts of England and Wales

[Eric the Half a Bee]

In another thread The Former Labour Leader commented "We rarely win in London". That got me thinking. Are we more successful playing teams from different parts of England and Wales? Are there bogey parts of the country? I thought I'd investigate.

I split England and Wales into 10 areas. Clockwise from the top I've gone Nrth West, North East, Yorkshire, Anglia/The Wash, London, South East, West Country, Wales, Midlands, Chilterns and M4 corridor. There could, of course, be endless debate about a few clubs and exactly where they would lie in this!

It might not be a surprise to learn that trips to Anglia/The Wash are our least fruitful, winning 22 out of 115 trips to that part of the world (19.1%). We rarely get much from Norwich, Peterborough and Cambridge and we once had a winless run at Ipswich stretching several decades. Next comes London, winning 76 out of 393 trips to the English capital (19.3%).

We've got our best win percentage in games in the North East, winning 53 out of 171 trips (31%). Next comes The Midlands with 111 wins from 367 visits (30.2%)

We have lost 64 of the 115 trips to Anglia (55.7%) and 214 out of 393 to London (54.5%). At the opposite end we've lost 43.4% of the time we travel to Yorkshire and 44.3% to the West Country.

If you want to see us scoring goals, trips to the Midlands and the West Country (1.19 and 1.18 per game respectively) are where we've scored the most. London and the Chilterns have seen us at our least fruitful (1.05 per game for both).

We save our best defensive performances for Yorkshire and the North East (1.56 and 1.57 per game respectively). We concede most goals in the Chilterns and the North West (probably the Preston effect, 1.89 and 1.87) respectively).

[the other bob wilson]

Thanks Eric, interesting and, for me, surprising stuff. The fact that we’re least successful in East Anglia is no surprise mind, Carrow Road was a notorious bogey ground when I was younger and I can remember the fuss when we finally won a game at Ipswich - I take it Peterborough, our biggest modern bogey ground was included in that part of the country?

Really surprised about the north east - we’ve lost every match we’ve played at Newcastle that I can remember since 1963 apart from the FA Cup win there eight years ago. Our record at Sunderland’s not bad and it’s pretty good at Middlesbrough mind - can’t remember us getting much when we played at Darlington though.