As mentioned in my first post I imported English and Scottish league results from Football-data and ran some basic rating systems against the data. You can view match ratings for past results and fixtures as well as recent form for the teams prior to each game.
The rating methods I’ve used are based on articles found online and are not meant as any kind of sophisticated method for picking winners or making a profit in the long term. I ran these on UK football results from 2000-2001 up to the current season just as an interest and they are only a starting point for any analysis. The screen shot belows shows how you can select and navigate through past results back to season 2000-2001.
Example Table Showing Match Ratings
Basic Football Rating Systems
I’ve looked at three match rating methods including an Elo rating system, goals superiority and a basic Win = 3, Draw = 1, Loss = 0 points method. However, no reference is made to true odds, value, goal expectancy or Poisson distribution etc. These are related topics with plenty of in-depth discussions online that I still hope to read and fully understand.
Win/Draw/Loss Match Rating System
The basic rating takes the last 6 league results for each team (home or away) and totals the number of points gained: Win = 3 points, Draw = 1 point, Loss = 0 points. The match rating is the home team’s points minus the away team’s points .
Goal Superiority Rating System
The next rating method is based on the goal superiority rating system mentioned in Football-Data’s FREE PDF guide to Rating Systems for Match Prediction. This one also looks at the last 6 league games. In this method a team’s ratings is calculated as their total goals scored minus their total goals conceded.
The match rating is then the Home team’s rating minus the away team’s rating. Football data’s article goes on to describe how to calculate a home win – draw – away win probability distribution and true odds for the three outcomes.
Elo Rating System
The Elo rating method is a bit more involved and you can read more background information here: Elo Rating System. I’ll go into a little more detail on how I use the Elo method in my next post but at the moment I feel it is a bit more accurate than the other two methods for predicting match outcomes.
The example results table below highlights last weekend’s Elo match ratings where the top 11 games all went to form as home wins. However, most weeks this is unlikely to happen as some games won’t go to form.
Highlight Key
= Home = Away = Draw| Date | Div | Home | Score | Away | Rating | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 05/04/14 | E0 | Man City | 4 : 1 | Southampton | 279 | |
| 05/04/14 | E0 | Chelsea | 3 : 0 | Stoke | 252 | |
| 05/04/14 | EC | Luton | 1 : 0 | Aldershot | 235 | |
| 05/04/14 | SC3 | Peterhead | 4 : 0 | Montrose | 220 | |
| 07/04/14 | E0 | Tottenham | 5 : 1 | Sunderland | 219 | |
| 05/04/14 | EC | Gateshead | 5 : 0 | Tamworth | 210 | |
| 05/04/14 | E2 | Brentford | 3 : 1 | Notts County | 190 | |
| 04/04/14 | E1 | Leicester | 2 : 1 | Sheffield Weds | 186 | |
| 05/04/14 | EC | Chester | 3 : 2 | Hyde United | 184 | |
| 05/04/14 | EC | Cambridge | 3 : 1 | Southport | 166 | |
| 05/04/14 | E1 | Wigan | 1 : 0 | Leeds | 159 | |
| 05/04/14 | E1 | Nott'm Forest | 1 : 2 | Millwall | 158 | |
| 05/04/14 | E2 | Wolves | 2 : 0 | Peterboro | 155 | |
| 05/04/14 | SC1 | Falkirk | 5 : 0 | Cowdenbeath | 143 | |
| 05/04/14 | E3 | Chesterfield | 1 : 1 | Newport County | 136 |