Search: Celtic | Football Data Science

Research

Is Scottish football less competitive than the rest of Europe?

…from second to third is twice anyone else's. Take out Celtic and Rangers, though, and the rest of the league is as even as any of the nine.

Machine Learning #16

How many shots is a goal worth? Linear regression

…shots on target suggest: Team-season Against the line Celtic 2022/23 +36 goals Celtic 2024/25 +30 goals Celtic 2013/14 +26 goals Dunfermline 2004/05 −21 goals…

Machine Learning #5

Stubborn or jumpy? Bias and variance

The football question Celtic lose at home to Rangers: their first defeat of the season. What should a prediction model make of it? One model shrugs: Celtic are…

Bayesian Thinking #5

Top at halfway. Who'll win the league? From beliefs to predictions

…Hearts were top of the Scottish Premiership: 41 points to Celtic's 38. Who was going to win the league? The table says Hearts. But a table is a snapshot of…

Bayesian Thinking #7

Was 7–0 a freak? Checking a model against the scores it predicts

…a Scottish Premiership side has won 7–0 seven times: Celtic five times, Hibernian once and Aberdeen once. Bigger still were Celtic's two 9–0s, at home to…

Research

When is the title decided?

…with a handful of games left. But anyone who watched Celtic in 2016/17 knew who'd win long before then. How early does the evidence settle a title race, and…

Game Theory #6

Who designs the game? Three points for a win and the rules behind the football

…Goal difference 2010/11 Rangers 30, 3, 5 +59 2010/11 Celtic 29, 5, 4 +63 2025/26 Celtic 26, 4, 8 +32 2025/26 Hearts 24, 8, 6 +33 In 2010/11, Rangers won the…

Glossary

Autocorrelation

…season before at 0.83 across all clubs, 0.46 without Celtic and Rangers.

Glossary

Competitive balance

…luck alone would make it, but only 1.5 times without Celtic and Rangers.

Machine Learning #12

Every team its own attack and defence. Dixon-Coles from scratch

…season and last season. But a fan sees more than that. Celtic score a lot. Hearts are hard to break down. A side can be poor overall and still dangerous going…

Machine Learning #1

What are we trying to predict? Features and targets

The football question Celtic play on Saturday. Before a machine learning model can tell us anything about the result, what do we have to decide? Two things,…

Research

Do football stats mislead? Five correlations put to the test

…different, but it isn't like with like: it runs from Celtic and Rangers down to good seasons from Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen, and inside it dominance still…

Myth or Maths

Do teams struggle after an international break?

…bookmakers expected, after a break and otherwise. Without Celtic and Rangers, it's −0.07 after a break against 0.00 otherwise, again inside the luck margin…

Machine Learning #18

Four ways to play. K-means and team styles

…7.5, 7.0 corners against 3.8, and the fewest fouls. It's Celtic in all 26 seasons and Rangers in 20, plus four others: Aberdeen in 2014/15 and 2016/17,…

Research

How do you know if a football prediction model is any good?

The research question If one model says Celtic have a 70% chance of winning and another says 55%, and Celtic win, which model was better? Both "got it right".…

Decision Science #3

Who's the best striker? The Pareto front

…conceded (fewer is better). Club (points) Scored Conceded Celtic (82) 73 41 Hearts (80) 67 34 Rangers (72) 76 43 Motherwell (61) 59 36 Hibernian (57) 58 44…

Machine Learning #2

Has the model learned, or just memorised? Training data and test data

…win. Memorise each fixture. For every pairing, such as Celtic at home to Hearts, it predicts whatever result happened most often in training. Team strength.…

Machine Learning #19

What happens next season? Time series and ARIMA

…matches the one five years earlier at 0.71. Take out Celtic and Rangers and the memory fades within a few seasons. Across all clubs it barely fades: five…

Bayesian Thinking #3

1–0 up at half-time. Will they hold on? Bayes' theorem

…without a prior. "They're 1–0 up" tells you one thing about Celtic away at a bottom side and something very different about the bottom side. Watch the flip.…

Myth or Maths

Are derbies unpredictable?

…and Bet365 odds from 2002/03. Six derbies: Old Firm: Celtic and Rangers Edinburgh: Hearts and Hibernian Dundee: Dundee and Dundee United New Firm: Aberdeen and…

Machine Learning #3

Brilliant in training, gone on matchday. Overfitting

…landing between the two. It looked like prime Glasgow Celtic in training. Then Saturday came. Try it yourself Think of a "rule" you've heard about your team:…

Myth or Maths

Do more shots mean a better attack?

…still varies. The best-finishing side in these seasons, Celtic in 2005/06, scored with 23% of its shots. The worst, St Mirren in 2025/26, managed under 7%. But…

Linear Algebra #9

Eight stats, one story. PCA and dimensionality reduction

…them. The four highest scores in the data all belong to Celtic, led by 2021/22. The lowest is Hamilton in 2019/20. Component 2: fouls The second component is…

Bayesian Thinking #4

Eleven goals in five games. Can they keep it up? Updating a team's scoring rate

…Goals scored depend on opponents. A side that played Celtic and Rangers early looks worse than it is. Real models adjust for who each team has played. k was…

Bayesian Thinking #8

Four from six. Is the new manager really better?

…difference. Every game counts the same. Martin's seven included Celtic and Hearts; Röhl's thirty included every side, home and away. The starting belief is a…

Statistics #4

How long until the next goal? The Exponential distribution

…asking this all the time when watching a game, especially Celtic or Spurs. The concept The Poisson distribution counts how many goals arrive in 90 minutes. The…

Statistics #3

How many goals will we score? The Poisson distribution

…minutes? My wife asks this a lot when we're watching Celtic or Scotland. We don't know how many shots they'll take, so we can't count attempts the way the…

Research

How many points is a goal worth?

…2007/08 41 −28 +4.3 St Johnstone, 2010/11 44 −20 +4.3 Celtic, 2016/17 106 +81 +3.7 Ross County, 2002/03* 35 −4 −4.0 Airdrie Utd, 2005/06* 45 +14 −4.0 *…

Myth or Maths

Is home advantage worth a goal?

…anyone score 0.24 of a goal. Although I've seen a few Celtic efforts that deserved partial credit. What it means is that over a big stack of games, home teams…

Myth or Maths

Is the split unfair?

…sixth plays the five best sides in the league, including Celtic and Rangers. Seventh plays the five worst. Here's what that does, averaged over 25 seasons: The…