Opta power rankings

[A N Mouse]

With only weeks before we have better things to talk about Opta have weighed in on the tired old debate about comparing clubs in different leagues.

https://theanalyst.com/eu/2023/02/who-are-the-best-football-team-in-the-world-opta-power-rankings/



hint search for premier division ireland, you should see it in the suggestions, as Derry are listed under a different country for some reason

you can apply multiple filters for countries or league to compare

[pineapple stu]

Interesting to see Kerry rated higher than Athlone and Cobh already!

[Burnsie]

If you filter it for England and Rep Ireland (plus N Ireland for Derry) ,it projects the following league positions in the English divisions:


Shamrock Rovers: 5th in Championship

Derry: Top of League One
Dundalk: 4th in League One
St Pats: 6th in League One
Sligo: 13th in League One
Bohs: 15th in League One

Shels: 5th in League Two
Cork City: 15th in League Two
Drogheda: 19th in League Two
Waterford: 22nd in League Two
UCD: 23rd in League Two

[Glen Of Aherlow]

If you filter it for England and Rep Ireland (plus N Ireland for Derry) ,it projects the following league positions in the English divisions:


Shamrock Rovers: 5th in Championship

Derry: Top of League One
Dundalk: 4th in League One
St Pats: 6th in League One
Sligo: 13th in League One
Bohs: 15th in League One

Shels: 5th in League Two
**** City: 15th in League Two
Drogheda: 19th in League Two
Waterford: 22nd in League Two
UCD: 23rd in League Two

Seems realistic ok

[Mr A]

These rankings clearly do not ascribe proper weighting to the quality of soup available at home games.

[John83]

Shamrock Rovers: 5th in Championship
If this were remotely true, the Rovers team would all be competing for places in the Ireland squad, which is riseable.

[placid casual]

Yeah I agree, the idea that this Rovers team would be even close to 5th in the english championship is completely false. We would be battling relegation in the championship, and I wouldn't expect us to survive. Top 5 in league 1 would be more appropriate I'd imagine

[placid casual]

Meant to add, the other projections for LOI teams are equally nonsensical. Dundalk/sligo /bohs would be at the bottom of league 1

[Glen Of Aherlow]

Yeah I agree, the idea that this Rovers team would be even close to 5th in the english championship is completely false. We would be battling relegation in the championship, and I wouldn't expect us to survive. Top 5 in league 1 would be more appropriate I'd imagine

i would'nt be sure Rovers would be even that level in League one , and i reckon the rest would be a mixture of League two and non league

[pineapple stu]

Meant to add, the other projections for LOI teams are equally nonsensical. Dundalk/sligo /bohs would be at the bottom of league 1
Yep, and an amateur student/youth team probably wouldn't be Conference level, let alone L2.

[DCWA]

There is no way Rovers would even be at the top of the League 1 and the notion of them (or any Irish club) being anywhere near the Championship is nonsensical.

The likes of Portsmouth, Barsnley, Derby, Ipswich, Sheffield Weds etc all in League 1 ffs.

Even clubs bigger than any in Ireland like Bradford sitting in League 2.

Find it hard to think that any LOI would survive for any sustained period of time in League 1. I think vast majority would struggle to hang about the lower echelons of League 2 / upper end of National League as well.

[pineapple stu]

I've brought up the below chart from this tweet (https://twitter.com/AndyForrester1/status/1446047884751867905/photo/1) before (or, well, Jd2793 did originally here (https://foot.ie/threads/99286-The-say-anything-what-s-on-your-mind-thread?p=2105811&viewfull=1#post2105811))

It uses European results to try gauge the strengths between each league. Summer football may "help" us there of course, but it's a comparison I'd be more in agreement with anyway.

(Ignore the "UK" reference...I think we were added to the chart at a poster's request)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBFkp3cWQAATuod?format=jpg&name=large

[brendy_éire]

The LoI/IL comparison seems to be fairly accurate.
A combined 10 team PD would have three IL clubs (Linfield, Larne, Cliftonville), a combined 16 team PD would have 6 IL teams (+Crues, Glens, Coleraine). I reckon that'd be how it would work out in reality.

It's exceedingly difficult to make comparisons, but the English ones well off.

[placid casual]

There's probably a tendency to see a well known english team and assume based on their historical stature that they'd be better than a LOI.
As mentioned no LOI team would survive in the championship, I'd wager Rovers, Derry and Pat's could hold their own in league 1. Most of the next 3 or 4 could manage league 2 imo.

[El-Pietro]

League of Ireland teams could beat Championship/League one clubs in one off matches. But those leagues are 46 game slogs which regularly involve two games a week. You could make an argument that Shamrock Rovers best 11 or say 14 would be comparable with specific English Clubs but the depth just isn't there and over a full season any Irish club as currently constructed would struggle to stay afloat in any of the professional divisions in England.

[2 Year Contract]

League of Ireland teams could beat Championship/League one clubs in one off matches. But those leagues are 46 game slogs which regularly involve two games a week. You could make an argument that Shamrock Rovers best 11 or say 14 would be comparable with specific English Clubs but the depth just isn't there and over a full season any Irish club as currently constructed would struggle to stay afloat in any of the professional divisions in England.

I see the point you’re trying to make but I think rovers have the squad to deal with that. A quick look at Carlisle United for example, this season they’ll have played 52 games by the end of the season. Shamrock rovers played 54 games last season

[BoyInGreen]

I've just taken a look at the methodology here:

https://theanalyst.com/eu/2023/01/power-rankings-your-club-ranked/

and I have to say that there are quite a few significant flaws with it. For one thing, Elo ratings in chess (where they were first used) do not become final until a player has played more than 25 games, yet Kerry are ahead of Athlone and Cobh without even playing a competitive match at senior level! I suspect what they did is that they simply applied the league rating without any further adjustments. It would have been more accurate (if still not ideal) to have given then Cobh's ranking of 48.8 for now.

The methodology is quite vague and lacks any statistical formulae, which one usually sees in Elo rankings like this. Compare it with ClubElo, which has been going for a while now:

http://clubelo.com/System

and you can see that they go down much deeper into how their rankings are calculated.

For what it's worth, I've been producing my own rankings for a couple of months now, but I didn't use the Elo system since this is difficult to get right. Instead, I used a generalised linear model to calculate attack and defence ratings for each team. I have about 10,000 teams formally ranked as well as a further 10,000 clubs where not enough matches have been played for a ranking:

http://clubfootballrankings.net/

As part of this, I can use the team rankings to calculate the average team ranking, and I have the Premier Division in 85th, between League Two and the National League, and the FD is in 290th, between the English sixth and seventh tiers and below the NIFL Premiership. These seem to tally with the general consensus in this thread. I have Shamrock Rovers in 437th (vs 299th in the Opta Rankings), which is equivalent to third in League One (perhaps a little controversial!).

I should say that there are a few problems with my effort as well, particularly at the intercontinental level, due to a lack of matches causing a lot of volatility, and newly promoted teams that start the season very strongly are given unrealistically high rankings, again due to a lack of games, but I'll settle for that given I have just a laptop, SQL and R to generate these. Opta on the other hand are the leaders in sports statistics and are usually quite reliable, so it's suprising that this isn't up to their usually high standards.