mcruic

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.

Yes - as these results are not included in the calculation. The point was just to illustrate what kind of level Lochee United (or the top of the current ERJFA Tayside league) would be at, given the only data available to make such a comparison.

Except elo (or better Élő) is a name, not an acronym It's one of the better and more easy to understand systems that can be implemented without too much fuss and computational power. But yes, I concur - ELO are pish.

Things that happened in 2016-17 probably account for less than 0.1% of the total due to the nature of the ranking system. It's mostly about current form, which shows Raith and Montrose as being pretty close. Falkirk had a better league run-in than both, and that is why they have ranked higher (though why they are so much higher I'm not sure). I'm open to criticism - I'm tweaking it a little to try and get something that might "feel" a bit more intuitive. I've got this "losing points for winning" by a small margin against bottom teams - perhaps that has unfairly punished some teams. "You can only beat what is in front of you" and all that.

Montrose and Raith had an identical points record over the last 8 games of the season. In the last mach between the sides, Raith won 4-3 at home. So, the rankings show this - the teams are close. In fact, Raith were above Montrose until the last game of the season, as they "only" beat Forfar 2-1 when they were expected to win by more.

Yes - it's an ELO based system, but using 100 iterations over the 19,000 matches. I could tweak it a little to make margin of victory have less of an effect, but apart from that, the only thing that would help it become more accurate is if there was more cross-league play - which as you pointed out is difficult at the moment. I've also got a "good loss/bad win" algorithm which allows teams to get points for losing (for example Fort William would gain points for losing 0-1 to Brora, while Brora would lose points). For the cases you mention, Lochee United beat Buckie 3-0 and drew with Ayr in their Scottish Cup run - which I think Stenhousemuir would do well to emulate. BSC Glasgow did well to keep pace with Kelty and Bonnyrigg last season - when they met Forfar in 2018, they lost 2-0 away, but Forfar were 2nd in League 1 at that time. Auchinleck have shown consistency that many League 1 and 2 teams would struggle to beat, even though their opposition has mainly been junior. As for Fort William - I'm not sure - but they did recently lose a friendly against a local amateur team (South Lochaber Thistle) and have been on the end of some thrashings in the Highland League. All in all, it will provoke debate - the main purpose is simply for there to be some kind of way to compare all the teams due to the strange quirks of Scottish club football. The main principle holds true though - good teams will rise, bad teams will fall.

It's calculated using the "eloratings" method, which largely nullifies the length of time used. The most recent matches are weighted most. What you are saying contradicts itself - you are saying Annan have had good form (over a long period), but you are arguing for the period to be shorter. Annan's most recent form was the 2nd worst in the league after Brechin (4 points out of their last 8 matches). That's how they've ended up where they are. The good thing about the system is that it allows teams to move up when they start playing well. If you take a snapshot of the rankings when Annan were doing well, they would be higher. It's not a static table.

I've taken my ranking program that I've used successfully for most team sports, and ran it on a database of results from all league and cup matches in senior and junior football from the start of the 2016-17 season onwards (19,000 + matches) to produce what should be a reasonable estimate of the current playing strengths of all 282 senior and junior clubs in Scotland. Note - this does not necessarily reflect league position. Rankings and league tables are not the same. The rankings take into account home advantage, and margin of victory, and league matches are weighted twice as much as cup matches. It's also possible to move up and down the rankings quite quickly with a good/bad run of form. Haven't seen anyone else do anything similar - so I'm just putting it out there. http://scotscores.theroonba.com/clubrank/clubrank.html

Trying to be as inclusive as possible on the Scot Scores website, so I'm including all adult amateur leagues that aren't affiliated to the SAFA. So far, I have the following 9 leagues: Arran League Islay League Lewis & Harris Community League Edinburgh Churches League IFA Scottish Supporters League Glasgow Community & Co-operative League (Sunday) Scottish Unity League (Sunday) Dundee University League (Sunday) Saint Andrews University League (Sunday) There are a number of former leagues that seem to have folded (Stewartry & District Sunday League, East of Scotland Churches League, for example). And there are a number of teams that don't have leagues (Mull Thistle, Isle of Coll, Kilchoan, Oban Earra-Ghaidheal, etc.) Does anyone know of any more local leagues I've missed?

FINAL

A couple of excellent ties - Only 16 teams left in now.

Round 5 finished: Into the Last 32 http://scotscores.theroonba.com/sim5.htm

http://scotscores.theroonba.com/sim4.htm Round 4 finished - couple of big shocks, but still lots of big teams in the Last 64.

Round 3 finished - Next up is Round 4 - all-in, with 128 teams. http://scotscores.theroonba.com/sim3.htm

2nd Round Results (regional) now online. http://scotscores.theroonba.com/sim2.htm 3rd Round will be last regional round before it becomes nationwide with the Last 128 teams.

What's left of the team has a home tie against Berwick club Highfields United in Round 2.

1st Round Results (regional) now online. http://scotscores.theroonba.com/sim.htm

I've used league points per game for last season for all teams who finished a season (had to use 2018-19 season for Perthshire as 2019-20 results were deleted from their website). For new teams, they have a random value between the lowest and highest points per game in whichever division they are entering for 2020/21. There's also a "tier" factor (so there is a handicap added to teams playing in Tier 2 of say, for example, the Caledonian League). Essentially, this ensures teams in the top of Tier 2 are slightly better than teams at the bottom of Tier 1. There are also "association handicaps" - each association is given a value based on results from last season's Scottish Cup and the District Cups. Central has the highest value, followed by Ayrshire and Caledonian, with Perthshire having the lowest of the summer leagues, with Caithness and Inverness & District having the highest of the summer leagues, and Shetland Works having the lowest of the winter leagues.. Eastfield (CSAFL) are thus the top-rated team, with the bottom-rated team being Shetland Banks of the Shetland Works League. Matches are played using this strength rating, and a random element is added (otherwise, teams with higher ratings would win all the time, and the winner of the competition would always be the same). 699 teams will enter, with 2 prelim rounds in each zone. Round 3 (Last 256) onwards is national. HIGHLANDS & ISLANDS - 109 (2 prelim rounds to get down to 28) NORTH - 65 (2 prelim rounds to get down to 32) NORTH OF TAY - 79 (2 prelim rounds to get down to 36) EAST - 141 (2 prelim rounds to get down to 60) WEST - 305 (2 prelim rounds to get down to 100)

As there's probably no amateur football until October, I'm working on a simulation of the Scottish Amateur Cup, including every single team affiliated to an official Scottish Saturday Amateur league - program should be ready some time tomorrow once I finish plugging in strength values for all 700+ teams. I'll post the results here if anyone is interested.