A brutal week for English clubs in the Champions League causing some serious Power Ranking hits for innocent bystanders throughout the country

Yikes 🥴

What an innings from Harry Brook! Looked in control, accelerated and stabilized the innings after early loss of wickets. Clutch!

Been a long time since I’ve worked on some #dataviz for the site. A small scrolly for a piece by @alitweedale.bsky.social 🛩️

What a final! The only negative was that winning delivery not being a hit wicket

The mighty Sunderland up to 34th globally in the Opta Power Rankings! Their highest position since the rankings began in 2010 (lowest was 1072nd after relegation to League One).

Adil Rashid has taken at least 1 wicket in his last 35 matches (when he's actually bowled) for England in white ball cricket (17 T20's, 18 ODI's). In total thats 64 wickets at 21.37.

The Premier League isn't 𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑒 certain of a fifth #UCL spot next season, but it's getting pretty likely. In 10,000 simulations of the rest of the season by the Opta supercomputer, the Premier League earned a bonus ticket 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞.

🇳🇱 Netherlands is going to drop to 7th, losing a Champions League ticket to 🇵🇹 Portugal. While technically they are still ahead, League Stage bonus points will change this. 🇳🇱 will likely see 5/6 (!) teams eliminated in the group stage, 🇵🇹 instead, will see 4/4 teams qualify.

After their loss last night, Real Madrid have dropped outside of the top 10 in the Opta Power Rankings for the first time in over 5 years. theanalyst.com/articles/who...

Heck of an innings from Harry Brook...crazy acceleration. Goes from 46(39) to then take 90 runs from his next 27 balls faced!

The first 100 in the Women's Premier League comes from Nat Sciver-Brunt off just 57 deliveries. The top scoring shot being the straight drive as it always should! #WPL2026

A great opportunity to showcase your skills to the wider sports analytics industry! We've had multiple recent presenters go on to join the Opta data science group. ⚽📐🐍

Just 6861 positions between Crystal Palace and Macclesfield in the Opta Power Rankings

⚽ Join the Data Science team at Opta! 🧮 Looking for an experienced Data Scientist who is passionate about applying AI and machine learning to solve complex problems in sports 📍In Europe, flexible to remote or office-based work ❓Drop me a message if you have any questions! tinyurl.com/3pdety28

𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐅𝐂𝐎𝐍 𝐓𝐞𝐬𝐭 Sunderland's survival blueprint is working well. But they will lose twice as many players to the Africa Cup of Nations as any other Premier League team. It promises to test Régis Le Bris. theanalyst.com/articles/sun...

New data science job opportunities in our team! ⚽📐

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐂𝐮𝐩 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔: Pre-Draw Predictions 📈 Ahead of the FIFA World Cup 2026 draw on Friday 5 December, the Opta supercomputer has produced its early predictions for this summer’s tournament in North America. Here are the results.

We now have 155 women's and 411 men's leagues ranked on @optaanalyst.optajoe.com! You can choose from 3 simple aggregations of the team-level Opta Power Rankings to order the leagues... (1/2)

After beating Chelsea at the weekend, the mighty Sunderland are back inside the top 50 of the Opta Power Rankings. It's their first time inside the top 50 since 1st February 2011 before they lost 4-2 at home, also to Chelsea...

Champions League update! 🔹 Arsenal still on top! PSG joins the fight for first after an away win at Barca. 🔹 Qarabağ with 2 wins! Now 75% likely to make the next round. 🔸 Both Dutch teams in bottom 6 teams — heading towards elimination. 🔸 Athletic Club with 2 losses heading towards an early exit.

Interesting insights from the Opta Supercomputer himself

Great to see the WSL added to @optaanalyst.optajoe.com, with detailed stats alongside fixture and season level predictions. theanalyst.com/competition/...

Szoboszlai's high workrate against Arsenal was highlighted on MoTD www.reddit.com/r/soccer/com... For this 23 second interval, we labelled 2 off-ball runs with our new Playing Styles framework A 82.3m cross option run (max speed 34.48 kph) and a 76.8m tracking back to position run (max 30.96 kph)

A deep dive into the Donnarumma vs Ederson debate, how much worse GD's passing really is, and what it all means for the role of Premier League goalkeepers. Pep has revolutionised the role once, but is he following a trend this time around? theanalyst.com/articles/gia...

New year, new coefficients simulation! ⚠️This year is the first time I've seen where the Big 4 might actually be challenged, as 🇫🇷 France _could_ overtake 🇩🇪 Germany. Being Top 4 gives you 4 direct UCL spots, which are now at risk for Germany, after some poor seasons in Europe.

Finally, here's our Conference League predictions. Again an English team favourites to win the League Stage — just like Chelsea was last year. Top 24 achievable for all, even lowest rated teams Shelbourne/Aberdeen with a ±20% chance!

In the Europa League, English teams are once again favoured to make an impression. Here's how we estimate each teams' likelihood of Top 8 and Top 24 in the League Stage.

A new #ChampionsLeague season is upon us! Here's each team's likelihood of qualifying for Top 8 or 24, according to our predictions:

It's only been 1 gameweek, but Mbeumo is continuing his incredible off-ball work rate at United. So far he's completed the most runs in behind the opposition (whilst his team has possession), a metric which he topped last season at Brentford.

What an innings from Jordan Cox. He went from scoring 8 runs off his first 8 deliveries, to scoring 78 from his next 21.

An incredible first international 100 from Dewald Brevis, from just 41 deliveries!

England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 v Sweden 🇸🇪 penalty shootout at #WEURO2025 🥇 worst total xGoT (1.23) of a shootout with >12 pens 🥇 worst conversion rate (0.38 goals per pen) of a shootout with >12 pens (last 381 men's and women's shootouts, Opta)

So close to a new world record from Wiaan Mulder! Just the 220 runs in boundaries

An interesting graphic considering his absence for much of last season. Timber offered a lot in defence but in attack Arsenal missed Ben White on the overlap.

𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐖𝐢𝐧 𝐔𝐄𝐅𝐀 𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧’𝐬 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓? 🏆 Women’s Euro 2025 is about to take centre stage in Europe, but who are the favourites to lift the trophy come the end of July? We look at the Opta supercomputer’s pre-tournament predictions: theanalyst.com/articles/uef...

With reported interest from Bayern Munich and summer transfer speculation brewing, Arsenal face a decision on Gabriel Martinelli. Their attack needs a refresh, but does that mean moving on from the talented Brazilian? ✍️ @orbinho.bsky.social theanalyst.com/articles/gab...

alternative: 𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰/𝟮𝟱 eligibility: ✅ <=21 y.o. at start of season ✅ 1500+ minutes ✅ first 1500+ minute season in a top tier league

On 9-5-2011 we had FK Bodø/Glimt ranked 2212 in the world. They had taken 2 points from the first 5 games in the Norwegian 2nd tier and were sat in the relegation zone. Today they are ranked 68 and Europa League Semi-Finalists. An incredible turnaround.

At 14 years old I was doing this on Brain Lara Cricket to be fair, not that impressive 😪

After Lazio's 2-0 loss last night, the battle for the Champions League bonus ticket is just about over. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 England's #5 is guaranteed a CL ticket 🇪🇸 Spain's #5 is 99.8% sure For 🇩🇪 and 🇮🇹 having 8 teams didn't help, but in the end they also didn't perform at the level needed.

[NEW] First blog in a long time! In which I show a pretty straightforward way to derive teams' attacking and defensive strengths from bookmaker odds. This method is not only easy to implement, but also very accurate compared to results-based models. mackayanalytics.nl/2025/04/01/g...

Stats Perform are looking for someone to join the data analysis team to work along side Jonny Whitmore and Jon Manuel. If you're passionate about football data and want to shape how we see the game through engaging visualisations, be sure to apply! ⚽️📈📊 #dataviz t.co/lOaOOtBJAY

Exciting semi-final line-up for the Women's Champions League, consisting of the top 4 teams in the world according to our Power Rankings on @optaanalyst.optajoe.com theanalyst.com/na/2024/08/w...

A great opportunity to work in an amazing team here at Opta! The Data Analyst team has a huge impact with external clients but also via collaborations within the company. They are the first heavy users of the Data Science team's work and provide incredible feedback/guidance throughout our projects

𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐠𝐮𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 With just a few weeks left of the 2024-25 season, we thought it was time to fire up the Opta supercomputer and see what it says about League One, including: ⬆️ The promotion race 📈 The play-off push 📉 The relegation battle theanalyst.com/2025/03/leag...

⭐ 𝐏𝐲𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐗 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐓𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑇𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑠 are available for our 𝑃𝑦𝑆𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑋 Stats Perform event in London on March 17th! 🎙️ We'll have various talks by Jonny Whitmore & @dannydinsdale.bsky.social, Sebastien Coustou, @tk5.futbol, Manuel Bassek (Floodlight) and more!

⚽ 𝐏𝐲𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐗 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐓𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬 We're excited to announce that 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑇𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑠 are now available for our 𝑃𝑦𝑆𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑋 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑠𝑃𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚 London event on March 17th!

Bonus Champions League ticket update: 🇮🇹 Italy grabs the last lifeline with 3/4 wins, among one a win against a Spanish team. 🇪🇸 Spain still favoured however with 6 teams still playing for now. England can start partying, only a miracle collapse can see them miss out.