I’ve been learning some new IT skills ahead of looking for new work, so I mashed together data on cup results and league tables going back to WWII, to look at 'giant-killing' in the Scottish Cup and League Cup. Results below – long post, but hopefully of interest to any stattos out there. League Cup group games are excluded as not really ‘giant-killing’ in terms of knocking a team out. League table data is from SPFL website, results data is from soccerbase, with lots of supplementing of shite/missing data with Wikipedia (still some oddities emerging but think it’s pretty good data at this stage).
Award for most 'giant-kills' against top division teams goes to the mighty, mighty Ayr. Interestingly, the data spans over 80 years but half of Ayr’s 20 scalps came in just a six year spell from 1996 to 2002. Top 10 hall of fame:
To give the diddiest of diddy teams a shout, the next chart is for knocking out anyone from a higher league, not just the top division. This should bring in some teams that have plied their trade in League 1 and League 2. A lot of overlap with the previous chart, but Raith leap-frogs Ayr to be king of the diddiest diddies and the likes of Queen’s Park, Alloa and Stirling make an appearance.
All very good, but it’s not really reflecting how many shots at knocking out higher league opposition that each team has had. The next couple of charts compare how much the actual win count for a team exceeds what would be expected (expected is based on the probability of beating a higher league team – see table at the end). Best ten and worst ten shown – you want your team to be to the left of this chart.
Hibs and Rangers doing well from their forays into the lower leagues but Airdrie out-performing expectations the most. Morton carries away the cap-doffing ‘yes m’lud’ trophy for rolling over.
Same again in the next chart, but for beating anyone from a higher division. Rangers, again, can do one and credit goes to Raith. ICT and one of its predecessors both doing well. Interestingly, some of the most famed giant-killers don’t fare so well here – Berwick, Stenhousemuir and Albion Rovers didn’t fare well on this scoring.
Flipping it all on its head – who in the top division has been dumped the most. Here you go:
And getting pumped by anyone from a lower league:
That’ll do with the charts for now. Next up – biggest wins in terms of gaps in league position (at the end of season). I’ve split this into league teams and non-league teams as I don’t have league positions for non-league. League first:
Competition
Season
Round
Home
Score
Away
LeagueDiff
Scottish Cup
2013/14
Fourth Round
Albion Rovers
1 - 0
Motherwell
37
League Cup
2006/07
Second Round
Queen's Park
p 0 - 0
Aberdeen
32
League Cup
2012/13
Third Round
Rangers
2 - 0
Motherwell
31
League Cup
1990/91
Third Round
Dunfermline
1 - 2
Queen of the South
28
Scottish Cup
2015/16
Fourth Round
Annan Athletic
4 - 1
Hamilton
27
Scottish Cup
1974/75
Third Round
Ayr United
1 - 2
Queen's Park
27
Albion’s win spanned almost the entire length of the divisions, with Motherwell finishing 2nd and Albion finishing 7th out of 10. Picking off a few surprising omissions from the top 5: Berwick’s win over Rangers was a league difference of 26 places so just below this table cut-off, Stenhousemuir’s win over Aberdeen was only 15 places difference and Clyde had 16 places between them and Celtic. Not too surprisingly, two-leggers don’t feature high up (first is Forfar beating Ayr in 1977 which was way down at joint 25th for 21 league places difference). I originally had Cowdenbeath beating Hearts over two legs in 1983 in the above - the soccerbase and Wiki results both make it look Cowdenbeath won 2-1 on aggregate but I can see references to Hearts winning on penalties and definitely Hearts went to next round – dunno, but googling told me that that was the fixture that got Craig Levein spotted so now you know.
Same for non-league (reflects how high the team up that was dumped rather than difference in their actual league positions):
Competition
Season
Round
Home
Score
Away
Away_Division
LeagueDiff
Scottish Cup
1958/59
First Round
Fraserburgh
1 - 0
Dundee
First Division / Division A (1946-75)
33
Scottish Cup
2020/21
Second Round
Brora Rangers
2 - 1
Hearts
Championship/Division 1 (1994- )
29
Scottish Cup
2018/19
Fourth Round
Auchinleck
1 - 0
Ayr United
Championship/Division 1 (1994- )
26
Scottish Cup
1989/90
Third Round Replay
Inverness Cal
p 1 - 1
Airdrie
Division 1 (1975-94)
26
Scottish Cup
1953/54
Third Round
Berwick Rangers
3 - 0
Dundee
First Division / Division A (1946-75)
25
No non-league wins over top division since they restructured the divisions in 1975. Four wins for non-league teams over top division opponents before that, all with the non-league team at home. Two of those are shown above, and the other two were Elgin over Ayr in 1967 and Montrose over QoS in 1948. Some of the team names like Montrose and Berwick don’t look like non-league – I think that the old Division C prior to 1975 was considered non-league so that’s how I’ve treated it, league table data isn’t listed on the SPFL website at least.
Hall of fame for wins over the Gruesome Twosome below. 15 wins, just 4 of them over Rangers. It’s a lot to list, but hey, FTOF. Berwick’s win in 1967 was the biggest upset based on league positions, but fair play to Morton for being shortly behind them in more recent times.
Competition
Season
Round
Home
Score
Away
LeagueDiff
Scottish Cup
2015/16
Semi Finals
Rangers
p 2 - 2
Celtic
12
League Cup
2013/14
Third Round
Celtic
0 - 1
Morton
21
League Cup
2011/12
Third Round
Falkirk
3 - 2
Rangers
13
Scottish Cup
2009/10
Semi Finals
Celtic
0 - 2
Ross County
15
League Cup
2006/07
Quarter Finals
Rangers
0 - 2
St. Johnstone
12
Scottish Cup
2005/06
Third Round
Clyde
2 - 1
Celtic
16
Scottish Cup
2002/03
Fifth Round
Inverness Caledonian Thistle
1 - 0
Celtic
14
Scottish Cup
1999/00
Third Round
Celtic
1 - 3
Inverness Caledonian Thistle
14
Scottish Cup
1996/97
Semi Finals Replay
Celtic
0 - 1
Falkirk
13
League Cup
1994/95
Final
Raith Rovers
p 2 - 2
Celtic
7
Scottish Cup
1977/78
Fourth Round Replay
Kilmarnock
1 - 0
Celtic
11
Scottish Cup
1966/67
First Round
Berwick Rangers
1 - 0
Rangers
26
League Cup
1952/53
Semi Finals
Kilmarnock
1 - 0
Rangers
19
Scottish Cup
1948/49
First Round
Dundee United
4 - 3
Celtic
18
Scottish Cup
1946/47
First Round
Dundee
2 - 1
Celtic
10
Still here? Here’s a chart to scratch your head over – not even sure if it’ll be legible. It’s got teams mapped by attempts and wins against top division teams, but also with an arrow from their expected number of wins to their actual – upward pointing arrow is good, downward is bad. I chopped off anyone with less than 10 attempts so most of the non-leaguers drop off here. Ayr’s success being above average, Morton’s boot-licking all-apparent.
Last up, what are the historic chances of an upset? This table is probably a bit confusing, but it shows the percentage of times a lower league team turfed out a higher league team since the leagues re-structured in 1994 (I can do earlier but the table gets bigger). It’s split by whether the team was home or away. Games that went to replay excluded.
Home_Division
Premiership/Premier Division
Championship/Division 1
League 1/Division 2
League 2/Division 3
Non-league
Premiership/Premier Division
NA
19%
8%
4%
0%
Championship/Division 1
33%
NA
23%
13%
4%
League 1/Division 2
10%
28%
NA
24%
12%
League 2/Division 3
15%
21%
34%
NA
22%
Non-league
0%
15%
18%
31%
NA
So the way to read this is the division of the home team is on the left, and away on the right e.g. if Championship team was at home against Premiership team, they went through on about 33% of occasions. So everything underneath the NA is lower league team being at home, and above the NA is lower league team being away. If you follow the diagonal from 33% down to 31%, it’s showing that chances of a team beating another from one division up while at home is about 30% i.e. close to 2/1 odds. The diagonal from 19% down to 22% is saying that when that same match has the lower league team away from home, it drops to about 20% i.e. close to 4/1 odds. As you move out one diagonal further from the NA, that’s the results vs two divisions above and so on. It looks pretty sensible, though there’s a strange outcome that League 2 has a higher success rate at home versus Premiership than League 1 does – maybe League 2 teams being underestimated by Premier teams? They have 7 wins in 48 attempts versus 12 wins for League 1 in 115 attempts, so it’s not like it’s just one or two freak results chucking it around.
Think that’s as much as I can think of doing with all of this so I’m off to find something more useful to do. Any questions, let me know and I might be able to answer. If anyone wants to play with the tidied data themselves, I’ll upload it.