Opinion · October 6, 2026
Hyth's Season 23 lineups, in numbers
The FFL said on its Discord that it had named Hyth, club 1617, for match fixing. It said the offence was a manager deliberately fielding a substantially weaker lineup against another club they own, while playing stronger lineups against other managers. Its punishment was to reduce the condition of all Hyth players to 20%.
Those are the FFL's findings, in the FFL's words. This report does not add to them. What it does is set out how Hyth picked their starting XI across Season 23, using the lineups Footium records for every league match.
Where Hyth stand
Hyth play in Division 6 League 11. After 21 league matches of Season 23 they were 2nd, with 16 wins, 2 draws and 3 losses, 79 goals scored and 26 conceded, and 50 points. They kept 12 clean sheets, and averaged 3.76 goals scored and 1.24 conceded a match.
Matchday 22 had not been filed when these numbers were taken, so everything below covers matchdays 1 to 21.
How we measured it
The match data Gazzetta uses does not give a lineup a rating, so there is no single number for how strong a team was on the day. We used a simpler measure of how regular a lineup was.
For each match, we took Hyth's 11 starters and counted how many Season 23 league matches each of them started. The match gets the average of those 11 counts. A high score means the regulars started. A low score means players who rarely started were picked.
The ceiling is 21. A club that started the same 11 players in every one of its 21 matches would score 21 every time. A club that rotated heavily would score much lower, because each player's count of starts would be smaller.
This measures regularity, not quality. A player who started few matches is not necessarily a lesser player, and the counts are season totals looking back from matchday 21, not what each player had done by kickoff.
The average
Across the 21 matches, Hyth's starters had made 9.42 league starts each on average. The median match scored 10.09, and the highest scored 10.91.
That highest score is about half of the ceiling of 21.
Put another way, a typical Hyth starter started a little under half of the club's 21 league matches.
How often the XI changed
Hyth never picked the same starting XI two matchdays running. Across the 20 back-to-back pairs of matchdays, the XI changed all 20 times.
Across the 21 matches they used 20 different starting XIs, and 35 different players started at least once.
The changes were large. On average, 8.1 of the 11 starters were new from the previous matchday. Sixteen of the 20 changes swapped six or more starters. The smallest change brought in two new starters.
What the numbers do not show
They do not show why any lineup was picked. A starting XI can change for many reasons, and the match data Gazzetta uses records who started, not the reasons behind the selection.
They do not measure player quality. A regular is not necessarily a better player than someone who rarely starts.
We have no league-wide figure to compare these numbers with, so this report does not say whether this much rotation is common or rare in Division 6.
What happens next
The FFL has published its finding and its punishment. These numbers cover matchdays 1 to 21.
Every figure here comes from Footium's recorded results and lineups for Hyth's 21 Season 23 league matches. Match reports, with line-ups and stats, are on Gazzetta.