I promised some of my Spanish readers that I would post this, and I'm finally able to do it now.

Below is the final Pythagorean table for the 2010-11 Spanish Segunda División, whose regular season concluded last weekend.  The league Pythagorean exponent is 1.70.

The league Pythagorean confirms Betis' deserved promotion based on their performance throughout the season, but the race for the second promotion place should have been more of a fight between Rayo Vallecano and Granada.  I would have liked to have developed Pythagorean tables for this league at other points of the season to find out if Rayo surged toward the end or Granada stagnated at some point.  Elche and Granada will playoff for the final promotion place, which appears to correspond well with the relative performance of the promotion playoff teams.  Granada-Celta was a toss up between two teams that underperformed (Granada won on penalties), while Elche-Valladolid matched up teams going in slightly different directions (Elche won 3-2 on aggregate).

Looking further down the table, I am intrigued by the performances of Recreativo and Cartagena.  Recre had the best defense in Segunda (mean and variance), yet finished in mid-table because of their inability to score.  Twenty draws and a Pythagorean residual of -5 told their story.  Cartagena had one of the worst defensive records in the league, yet managed to sneak enough 1-0 wins to finish mid-table with a Pythagorean residual of +9. 

The three relegated teams — Tenerife, Ponferradina, and Albacete — had poor seasons that were confirmed by their Pythagorean residuals.  Sometimes relegated teams with very negative residuals bounce back to the upper division immediately, but Spain's lower divisions are harder to get out of.  It will be interesting to look at the performance of the relegated teams in Segunda B next season.