The Football League Trophy: Promotion correlation?

On Tuesday night I visited Rodney Parade. A quaint, typical football league ground with considerable character, even if the attendance only amounted to 635.

It was a game in the Leasing.com Trophy. A much maligned piece of silverware often discarded as worth next to nothing, and to develop elite under-21 sides. But that got me thinking.

As both Newport County and Exeter City, the two sides I was observing that night, are currently excelling in their division, it made me wonder how well sides do usually if they end up winning the Leasing.com Trophy, or the Johnstone’s Paint/EFL/Checkatrade equivalents.

The tournament was introduced in 1983, with the 48 eligible third and fourth division sides being entered into the competition then known as the ‘Associate Members’ Cup’, which it was known as until 1992 when the third and fourth divisions became full members of the football league.

Since 1983/84, there have been 36 seasons of the EFL Trophy. In that time, there have been 27 winners, ranging from the now Premier League sides Southampton and Bournemouth, to lowly non-league outfit Wrexham. But how many actually got promoted after winning the trophy, finished mid-table, or even ended up being relegated, and what sort of omen will this prove to future winners?

The inaugural winners of the trophy were AFC Bournemouth. Now that simple sentence may lead you to believe that the winning of this trophy takes you great places, however, with Bournemouth finishing 17th in 83/84 and eventually heading towards the non-league as the millennium loomed, that statement would immediately be cancelled out.

And with the first four winners, Wigan Athletic, Bristol City and Mansfield Town alongside Bournemouth all finishing lower than ninth in the third tier, it would all but confirm that the Associate Members Cup was a curse on its holder.

The rot would be stopped the next season, but not in the way we expect. In 32 of the 36 editions the champions have come from Division Three, the Third Division or League One, but the first from the fourth actually came in the form of recent Manchester conquerors Wolverhampton Wanderers. They picked up the trophy in 1988, a season in which they coasted to the fourth division title simultaneously.

In total only four winners have come from the fourth tier, with Wolves being the only winner in the 20th century. MK Dons, Luton Town and most recently Danny Cowley’s Lincoln City, who weren’t promoted until the following season. MK won the League Two title in the same season in 2008, with Luton actually going down in 22nd place in the same season as their Wembley triumph the next year.

Talking of relegated sides, Luton are one of four sides to have won the competition in the same year as being relegated in their league campaigns, although the Hatters are the only to have dropped into the National League. Wrexham (2005), Chesterfield (2012) and Coventry (2017) all dropped into League Two after winning the trophy.

And overall, only six teams in the 36 year history of the competition have been promoted, with two of them coming from the fourth tier (Wolves 1988 and MK Dons 2008) and four from the third tier. These were two time winners Birmingham City (1995) and Carlisle United (1997), with Bristol City and Barnsley (2015 and 2016) being the only two in the 21st century to win both promotion and the EFL Trophy in the same season.

So what can we conclude? The EFL Trophy is not the poisoned chalice it is sometimes famed to be, and it’s neither a golden ticket. Probably that this was a completely pointless investigation, but I enjoyed doing it!

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