As usual, here are the match timelines for each of the weekend’s League 1 matches. There’s a full explanation of these here, but in a nutshell they track how each team’s expected goals tally (the number of goals that the average team would have scored from their shots) changed over the course of the match.

You can also compare these with how the E Ratings predicted each match would pan out here.

Summary

First of all, here are all of the timelines together, with the same vertical scale to help you pick out which saw the most (and least) goalmouth action:

Individual matches

Barnsley’s performances have been improving steadily this season and they’ve long looked better than their league position, but Rochdale are a sufficiently strong side for this to be a shock result. After a poor first half the home side comfortably out-created their visitors in the second and look to have deserved the win, although perhaps not the full extent of the margin that went with it.

Given how poorly Shrewsbury have fared this season, this result also goes down as something of a shock. Burton’s finishing has been surprisingly poor this season and it looks to have let them down here: after taking the lead they were gridlocked for the remainder of the first half but dominated the second, only to see their visitors score twice from far fewer attempts.

While the scoreline isn’t too surprising – after all, this looked to be a challenging match for Chesterfield – the home side probably deserved better here. The Spireites dominated the first half but saw their lead immediately cancelled out by one of Millwall’s few shots, before being pegged back by the visitors’ much more energetic second half display. However the balance of chances created suggests that the hosts could have expected at least a draw overall.

Crewe did very well to take a point off Wigan here, given both their gulf in ratings and the far better chances that their visitors created on the day. Wigan started and ended the first half poorly but posed the more regular threat in the second half, with their hosts only shooting intermittently throughout.

Fleetwood have improved significantly this term and, like Barnsley, are performing far better than the league table suggests. They look to have had the better of this game overall, with Doncaster – themselves recently recovered from a surprisingly poor start to the season – reduced to mainly speculative efforts. However the home side took a while to get going after the half time interval and look to have left themselves with too much to do.

Peterborough’s promotion charge looks to be in danger of fizzling out, although they were perhaps unfortunate here. While they have taken the most shots in League 1 it is Gillingham who have been by far the most clinical finishers, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that the home side – and new league leaders – were able to profit more from chances of similar quality.

The main difference between these two sides this season has been their finishing – both have taken and faced a similar number of shots but the Shakers have made far better use of theirs – so it was perhaps unsurprising that it settled this contest. Both sides created equally good chances, with the visitors doggedly pushing for an equaliser after conceding from the game’s first shot, which will probably be of little comfort given the widening gap between them and safety.

Port Vale started by far the more quickly here but will perhaps regret not pushing for a second goal after taking an early lead. Bradford recovered as the first half went on, with their hosts creating little more until shortly before the break, but endured a similarly slow start to the second before clawing back a slightly fortunate point.

Scunthorpe put their shock 5-0 defeat to Blackpool behind them with a comfortable home win here, although the first hour was far from convincing. Colchester have had a habit of dominating matches without reward and their positive start to this match was typically fruitless. The visitors were unable to offer much after the first half an hour and their concession of three goals in a short second half burst was also symptomatic of their worryingly leaky defence this season.

This was a strangely disappointing performance from Sheffield United, who created little after their early penalty despite being at home to one of the division’s more vulnerable defences. Swindon were the busier team by far despite a slow start to each half and look to have deserved their late equaliser.

Southend’s victory here is all the more impressive given that they were a man down for most of the second half. The winning margin flattered them somewhat and without their second half penalty things looked relatively even overall. Coventry may have paid the price for starting slowly: they ended up creating as much goalscoring potential in the final 15 minutes as during the previous 75.

This was a second impressive result in a row for Blackpool, who started better than their promotion-chasing hosts here. Despite eventually falling behind as Walsall grew into the game and began to dominate, the away side pushed forward and were rewarded with a late equaliser that their overall performance looks to have merited.