Steve loves the madcap home and away days

CALL it a quirky glitch or call it proving anything with statistics, but something weird and wacky is happening in Sky Bet League One that has home teams waiting for the weekend in trepidation.

Over the past month, the division has become the preserve of the away teams.

Take last Saturday, for example, when there were eight away wins in League One and only Oldham and Portsmouth triumphed at home.

Not just squeaky away wins either as Oxford, Scunthorpe and Blackburn all won by at least three-goal margins.

Where the trend truly enters football’s twilight zone is that it is holding truest at weekends. Since the beginning of October, only one weekend out of six has seen more sets of home fans go home happier than their visiting counterparts.

No team has better exhibited this new phenomenon than Gillingham since Steve Lovell, now confirmed as manager until the end of the season, took over as caretaker in mid-October. His four away fixtures have yielded 10 points from a possible 12, including wins at promotion-chasing Peterborough and Rotherham.

By contrast his side has managed just two points from three home games with relegation rivals Northampton and Bury among the visitors to Priestfield.

“It must be just coincidence why it’s happening but we have got a home game against Oldham on Saturday so I hope it doesn’t happen then as well,” said Lovell.

“There are no reasons for it as far as I can see. We have had a good run of games and we performed well even in the home games. We just didn’t manage to win them but there was no difference in the way we played. Maybe it’s just the luck of the draw.”

With goal differential favouring the away sides in recent weeks, Lovell does not see the odd Saturday sequence as being a result of teams travelling with more intention of keeping matters tight and pilfering a goal and the points on the break.

Instead, he points the finger at the evenness of this season’s League One. The 17 teams from Peterborough in seventh to Bury in 24th are covered by just 12 points.

Lovell said: “It’s been nice for our fans in particular to see us win away recently because they did not have a lot to cheer earlier in the season. I wouldn’t say it’s how we’ve played.

“It’s just the way the games are and the way they are opening up in this division.

“League One is absolutely crazy. It’s so open. Everybody is beating everybody else.

“You can win three games on the spin and you go from the relegation zone to just outside the play-offs.

“There are no set rules about what’s going to happen any week but hopefully this week will see the reverse of last Saturday and there will be eight home wins with us being one of them.”

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League One is absolutely crazy, it is so open