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Combined senior/junior ranking (282 clubs)


mcruic

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4 hours ago, mcruic said:

If I use a straight elo system, with no punishment for "narrow wins against lower ranked teams", Raith is 23rd and Montrose is 26th.  But Auchinleck is 16th.  But I'm happier with that system overall, as it's easier to understand (if you win you gain points, if you lose you lose points) - new ranking is now online.

 

What it seems to show:

 

WoS League (Tier 6) is stronger than both LL and HL (Tier 5).
EoS Premier (Tier 6) is stronger than LL (Tier 5).  We've seen this in action with the progression of Kelty and Bonnyrigg.

Banks o' Dee would be a Top 3 side in the HL.  Other top teams (Culter, Hermes) would be mid-to-lower mid-table.
Top Tayside junior clubs could be Top 5 material in the EoS Premier (or indeed the HL).
Top North Caledonian League teams would struggle similarly to Fort William in the HL.
Some of the remaining Lothian junior teams would be at least good enough to win the EoS Tier 7 leagues and establish themselves in the EoS Premier.
 

I think most people would agree to the basic summary.

Not sure what it would take to finesse out some of the small issues that pop when some clubs have been part of the same structure. In which case there's actual practical evidence that a club should be higher than another.

Like 53. Blantyre Victoria and 54. Irvine Meadow. They're in the same league now, but Irvine Meadow have been playing at a higher level the last 3 years than Blantyre. It's also not like Meadow were in relegation battle in the West Premiership while Blantyre in a promotion fight from the Championship that would suggest the two would be so close.

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I think the problem might be that inter-divisional matches in the West can be close as the big teams might not take it as seriously.  So, for example, you can find 2nd division teams going far in the cup competitions.  The system relies on "crossover" matches between divisions/associations, which happen only in cup competitions and play-offs.  These are the "bridges" that link the separate bubbles of data.

Or perhaps the top teams in the West 2nd tier this year were better than they were given credit for.  Darvel in the last 8 of the SJC, for example (Irvine Meadow didn't reach that stage).

 

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2 hours ago, FairWeatherFan said:

I think most people would agree to the basic summary.

Not sure what it would take to finesse out some of the small issues that pop when some clubs have been part of the same structure. In which case there's actual practical evidence that a club should be higher than another.

Like 53. Blantyre Victoria and 54. Irvine Meadow. They're in the same league now, but Irvine Meadow have been playing at a higher level the last 3 years than Blantyre. It's also not like Meadow were in relegation battle in the West Premiership while Blantyre in a promotion fight from the Championship that would suggest the two would be so close.

But this isn't a historical ranking - it's a ranking of current strength - teams from lower leagues can be stronger than ones from leagues above.  What the team has done in the last 3 years is irrelevant - all that is relevant to their current strength is the last 9 or 10 matches.

In saying that, if Blantyre are indeed too high, they will soon fall to a more realistic position once the league season starts.  One thing I could try is to give more points for wins in higher leagues - but this would also mean teams would lose more points for losing in these leagues.

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28 minutes ago, mcruic said:

But this isn't a historical ranking - it's a ranking of current strength - teams from lower leagues can be stronger than ones from leagues above.  What the team has done in the last 3 years is irrelevant - all that is relevant to their current strength is the last 9 or 10 matches.

In saying that, if Blantyre are indeed too high, they will soon fall to a more realistic position once the league season starts.  One thing I could try is to give more points for wins in higher leagues - but this would also mean teams would lose more points for losing in these leagues.

In a league body like the West Region which has divisions, historical ranking is relevant to current strength. As the divisional opponents will be tougher the higher the division gets. So you are unlikely to get the same level of consistency the higher the division.

If you had Irvine Meadow and Blantyre Victoria of 2019-20 switch their last 10 fixtures. On paper you would expect Irvine to do better than Blantyre did and Blantyre to do worse than what Irvine did.

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I've introduced a divisor depending on the tier of the competition played (in cup competitions, it's the tier of the highest ranked team that enters the competition).  So if you thrash a lot of teams in Tier 7, you don't go too high.

This seems to have addressed a few of the concerns mentioned above. 

52. Irvine Meadow
64. Blantyre Victoria

Auchinleck back down to 22.

For the junior leagues, I've calculated them as Tier 6 for the top division (same for North Caledonian, though those in the East might be better thought of as Tier 8 in terms of their relationship to the pyramid now if they wanted to join.

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On 30/08/2020 at 12:44, mcruic said:

EoS Premier (Tier 6) is stronger than LL (Tier 5).  We've seen this in action with the progression of Kelty and Bonnyrigg.
 

It's not that simple though. I'd say the top end of the LL is quite a big stronger than the EoS. Aruably the bottom 5 or 6 clubs in the LL would struggle and are probably at a lower standard than the bottom 5/6 in the EoS. But Kelty didn't win the LL in their first season and Bonnyrigg finsihed 2nd, which doesn't show the EoS is stronger as Bonnyrigg won that.

Good effort. As with the word rankings, it's very difficult to rank teams between groups who rearely play each other. I don't think even the most ardent junior enthusiast would claim Auchinleck are genuinely at Championship level. But it's obviously very difficult to gauge how strong the ex-west juniors vs clubs in the pyramid.

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I think the couple of tweaks have improved things. Major problem at this point is just the incomplete season with recent form being so important. Like Queen of the South shouldn't be as low as 28th but they hadn't won since 28th December 2019. If the season had been completed I imagine they would have climbed.

From a quick glance it's gotten to a point where maybe the lower division team chasing for the championship/promotion will be favoured over the team above battling relegation for the most part. Which is fair enough.

The one real anomaly to me at this point is Glasgow University. Now they're in a senior league that'll resolve itself once the season starts.

 

 

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I agree - Glasgow University seem a bit too high - but their position is based only on very few matches.  Ideally, I'd include all the amateur results as well and they'd be in a more realistic place - but I only have one pair of hands, and there's only so much typing into spreadsheets I can manage.

As well as the individual league tabs, there's now 6 regional tabs, and each club is now hyperlinked, so you can see a complete list of their matches from the last 4 seasons.  So it's now morphed into an at-a-glance guide to all the teams and their recent form.

 

http://scotscores.theroonba.com/clubrank/clubrank.html

Edited by mcruic
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19 hours ago, mcruic said:

St is short for Saint in all cases.  Whether the clubs acknowledge this or not is up to them.

Sure but it just looks a bit silly to have all these clubs named something other than their common and official names. ;)

Also, Camelon, Tranent, Sauchie, Beith, Cumnock, Greenock, Lesmahagow Maybole, Muirkirk are all missing "Juniors" from their names.

"East of Scotland Cup" for senior clubs should be renamed East of Scotland League Cup

Looking at Fauldhouse - their results from the East Region, Superleague South seems to be missing http://www.ultrasoft2.co.uk/ersjfa/tables.asp?Competition=McBookie.com South Superleague&Season=2020 (and the league results for the likes of Lochee would need to be renamed East Region, Superleague North)

Perhaps for the Juniors you could change Tier ? to J-East and J-North1 or similar? NC for North Caley? Better than just a question mark IMO.

You've also got Gala Fairydean Rovers in the South West page.

I suppose once the South Challenge Cup kicks off again we'll have some more inter-league results to help the rankings.

Edited by Ginaro
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Cheers - I'll get all this updated.  The East Superleague South does appear to be missing - although it's in my spreadsheet - so it's a bug somewhere in the program that I'll have to try and find. 

I've not put in Juniors as it's not always certain if it's "really" part of the name - Blairgowrie call themselves BJFC for example - but is the Juniors part of the name?  Neilston seem to have dropped the Juniors recently and are now just Neilston.  I imagine if any of these teams ever got promoted to the SPFL, they'd drop the "Juniors" moniker.

Edited by mcruic
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7 minutes ago, mcruic said:

Cheers - I'll get all this updated.  The East Superleague South does appear to be missing - although it's in my spreadsheet - so it's a bug somewhere in the program that I'll have to try and find. 

I've not put in Juniors as it's not always certain if it's "really" part of the name - Blairgowrie call themselves BJFC for example - but is the Juniors part of the name?  Neilston seem to have dropped the Juniors recently and are now just Neilston.  I imagine if any of these teams ever got promoted to the SPFL, they'd drop the "Juniors" moniker.

Some of them have went with the "if it's good enough for Boca Juniors, it's good enough for us" approach. Typically, I try to go with whatever the official league website go with. Since they're meant to know these things.

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Added the 2019-20 East Region Superleague South results now - makes a big difference to Livingston United - I was wondering why they were ranked so low before...

For Glasgow University - I could try adding a season of Caledonian Amateur League results and see what affect that has on their ranking.  Ideally, I'd be able to add all amateur results, but it's difficult to get all even for last season (even though most leagues have websites, they seem to wipe a lot of older results).

 

 

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2 minutes ago, mcruic said:

Added the 2019-20 East Region Superleague South results now - makes a big difference to Livingston United - I was wondering why they were ranked so low before...

For Glasgow University - I could try adding a season of Caledonian Amateur League results and see what affect that has on their ranking.  Ideally, I'd be able to add all amateur results, but it's difficult to get all even for last season (even though most leagues have websites, they seem to wipe a lot of older results).

 

 

If this is going to be a 'live' table once the season starts, then Glasgow University will sort itself. I doubt anyone is gaining a larger enough advantage/disadvantage by their current standing.

Going down the amatuer rabbit hole, would mean adding Rothie Rovers amatuer games as well :)

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17 minutes ago, FairWeatherFan said:

If this is going to be a 'live' table once the season starts, then Glasgow University will sort itself. I doubt anyone is gaining a larger enough advantage/disadvantage by their current standing.

Going down the amatuer rabbit hole, would mean adding Rothie Rovers amatuer games as well :)

Yes - the ranking is already live - it's up to date with the Premiership score so far this year.

As for the amateur rabbit hole, Drumchapel United also - and there's also Loch Ness jumping from amateur to senior.  Also in the North Caley, Scourie is essentially Kinlochbervie Amateurs.  Edinburgh South and St. Cadoc's would take a major feat of engineering to get on to the rankings, as that would involve scouring youth team results and trying to find some "crossover" matches.  By the way, Saint Cadoc's seem to be taking the "Youth Club" suffix with them, even though they are going senior.

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