Analytics suggest hellish week halved Sheffield Wednesday's League One promotion chances

Heading back to action after a fortnight away and hoping to build on a long unbeaten pre-Christmas league run that saw them sat on the fringes of the League One playoff places, back-to-back defeats at Sunderland and Shrewsbury Town have seen that bubbling momentum quashed.

Such is the pressure of life on the fringes of those playoff places, it’s a horror week that has changed the picture of Wednesday’s season – for now at least – if the analytics experts at FourThirtyEight are to be believed.

Their data model, which takes into account the value and experience of each team’s squad as well as momentum, recent form home and away form and xG guides, showed that the chances of the Owls’ promotion from the third tier had more than halved after the two damaging results.

With all the number-crunching taken into account, they believe Wednesday have just a 14 per cent chance of promotion this season, down from 31 per cent before the Sunderland clash.

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For the first time this season it is calculated that Darren Moore’s men have a less than one per cent chance of winning the title – they are now 13 points shy of table-topping rivals Rotherham United – while their chances of making the playoffs are at 37 per cent, down from 52 per cent chance pre-Christmas.

Gladly, from an Owls point of view, football is not played via algorithm and if those tumbling odds show anything it’s that things can turn around as quickly as they can fall.

Wednesday’s next match is at home to Plymouth Argyle on January 15.