They say a picture paints a thousand words, so I decided to simulate 100 seasons and stick the data into a visualisation tool.
I created a simple mobile friendly dashboard and a more enhanced dashboard providing a much richer experience.
Methodology
To speed things up I took charge of a team and then went on holiday, leaving all the management tasks to the games AI. Doing it this way meant I could complete a season in around 30 minutes. I did this twice, the first time I started in the Scottish leagues (with Edinburgh City) and the second time I started in the English leagues (with Accrington Stanley). I then extracted the data using the "Print as web page" facility of Football Manager. I did this for the top four leagues in England and Scotland, taking a screenshot of the end of season league table for each year from 2018 to 2117. This gave me a total of 800 web pages (8 leagues x 100 seasons). The next challenge was to get all 800 pages into Excel in an efficient manner. Thankfully the HTML code within each page was quite clean, so I therefore used Python and Beautiful Soup to stack all of the HTML tables on top of each other. After a quick tidy-up of the HTML code I was good to go with bringing the data into Excel via a simple copy and paste of the table element. Once in Excel I enhanced the data with some extra dimensions such as country, league and year. I also added some extra measures such as win% and goals scored per game. Finally, for good measure I threw in some Latitude and Longitude values for the teams to make it easier to plot the data on a map (thanks to Doogal for the data). The final dataset was then brought into Tableau to allow me to produce the visualisations. I struggled with putting something together that worked well across all devices, so in the end went with two versions. The first version was a simplified dashboard, optimised for mobile devices, containing just the league tables. The second version is a more enhanced set of visualisations giving the user a much richer experience. Feel free to come up with your own insights, but here are some of the things/stories that I discovered:
Arsenal firing blanks
The table below shows every team that managed to make it into the Premier League between 2018 and 2117. No real surprises with the top two teams, but hats off to Everton for clinching 20 league titles (five times as many as their city rivals). Biggest surprise, other than Norwich winning three titles, was the lack of success for Arsenal. Even Tottenham managed to win three titles, despite being relegated five times! Also, it's worth noting that Man City and Chelsea never finished in the bottom half of the league throughout the 100 seasons.
View attachment 74620
A game of two halves
In Scotland, Celtic dominated the first 50 years (top table), winning an incredible 32 league titles.
View attachment 74619
The next 50 years (bottom table) was all about the two Edinburgh teams, Hibernian and Hearts. Both teams managed a magnificent seven in a row on their way to a combined total of 23 league titles.
Equilibrium
An interesting thing happened in Scotland during the 100 seasons. The table below shows the final positions for League Two in Scotland in 2023, notice anything strange about the team that finished 6th?
View attachment 74618
That's right, in 2023, Forfar managed to achieve a "state of equilibrium": won 12 games, drew 12 games, lost 12 games, scored 43 goals and conceded 43 goals. Three other teams managed to replicate the same "achievement" with Inverness (2030), Clyde(2037) and Dumbarton (2041) all finishing the season with the same number of wins, losses, draws and a goal difference of zero.
The Invincibles
Two teams managed to complete a full season without losing a single game, Chelsea (2025 and 2079) and Aberdeen (2075). In fact, the first time Chelsea finished the season undefeated they didn't even win the league!
View attachment 74617
At the opposite end of the spectrum, both Hamilton (2036) and Ayr (2086) managed to go a full season without winning a game in the Scottish Premiership.
Tight at the top
So many tight finishes to choose from but two caught the eye, both from League Two in England. From 2047 we have four teams with the same number of points - Peterborough had the most wins (22), Burton and Accrington had the same goal difference (16), but it was Colchester who came out on top.
View attachment 74616
The other tight finish came in 2108 with Cheltenham and Chesterfield. Both teams finishing with near identical records. Looks like the one extra goal for Cheltenhammade all the difference.
View attachment 74615
Annan-ymous
Finally, spare a thought for poor Annan. Relegated from League Two in Scotland in 2018, never to be seen again.
View attachment 74614
What next?
The data collected so far is very small, limited to just eight leagues spread across two countries. There is scope to add more leagues and include cup competitions. With the 2018 World Cup approaching I may even do a World Cup special to see if Scotland fulfil their potential and lift the coveted trophy sometime in the next millennia. I can only dream.
Happy to answer any questions on the tools used to create this.
I created a simple mobile friendly dashboard and a more enhanced dashboard providing a much richer experience.
Methodology
To speed things up I took charge of a team and then went on holiday, leaving all the management tasks to the games AI. Doing it this way meant I could complete a season in around 30 minutes. I did this twice, the first time I started in the Scottish leagues (with Edinburgh City) and the second time I started in the English leagues (with Accrington Stanley). I then extracted the data using the "Print as web page" facility of Football Manager. I did this for the top four leagues in England and Scotland, taking a screenshot of the end of season league table for each year from 2018 to 2117. This gave me a total of 800 web pages (8 leagues x 100 seasons). The next challenge was to get all 800 pages into Excel in an efficient manner. Thankfully the HTML code within each page was quite clean, so I therefore used Python and Beautiful Soup to stack all of the HTML tables on top of each other. After a quick tidy-up of the HTML code I was good to go with bringing the data into Excel via a simple copy and paste of the table element. Once in Excel I enhanced the data with some extra dimensions such as country, league and year. I also added some extra measures such as win% and goals scored per game. Finally, for good measure I threw in some Latitude and Longitude values for the teams to make it easier to plot the data on a map (thanks to Doogal for the data). The final dataset was then brought into Tableau to allow me to produce the visualisations. I struggled with putting something together that worked well across all devices, so in the end went with two versions. The first version was a simplified dashboard, optimised for mobile devices, containing just the league tables. The second version is a more enhanced set of visualisations giving the user a much richer experience. Feel free to come up with your own insights, but here are some of the things/stories that I discovered:
Arsenal firing blanks
The table below shows every team that managed to make it into the Premier League between 2018 and 2117. No real surprises with the top two teams, but hats off to Everton for clinching 20 league titles (five times as many as their city rivals). Biggest surprise, other than Norwich winning three titles, was the lack of success for Arsenal. Even Tottenham managed to win three titles, despite being relegated five times! Also, it's worth noting that Man City and Chelsea never finished in the bottom half of the league throughout the 100 seasons.
View attachment 74620
A game of two halves
In Scotland, Celtic dominated the first 50 years (top table), winning an incredible 32 league titles.
View attachment 74619
The next 50 years (bottom table) was all about the two Edinburgh teams, Hibernian and Hearts. Both teams managed a magnificent seven in a row on their way to a combined total of 23 league titles.
Equilibrium
An interesting thing happened in Scotland during the 100 seasons. The table below shows the final positions for League Two in Scotland in 2023, notice anything strange about the team that finished 6th?
View attachment 74618
That's right, in 2023, Forfar managed to achieve a "state of equilibrium": won 12 games, drew 12 games, lost 12 games, scored 43 goals and conceded 43 goals. Three other teams managed to replicate the same "achievement" with Inverness (2030), Clyde(2037) and Dumbarton (2041) all finishing the season with the same number of wins, losses, draws and a goal difference of zero.
The Invincibles
Two teams managed to complete a full season without losing a single game, Chelsea (2025 and 2079) and Aberdeen (2075). In fact, the first time Chelsea finished the season undefeated they didn't even win the league!
View attachment 74617
At the opposite end of the spectrum, both Hamilton (2036) and Ayr (2086) managed to go a full season without winning a game in the Scottish Premiership.
Tight at the top
So many tight finishes to choose from but two caught the eye, both from League Two in England. From 2047 we have four teams with the same number of points - Peterborough had the most wins (22), Burton and Accrington had the same goal difference (16), but it was Colchester who came out on top.
View attachment 74616
The other tight finish came in 2108 with Cheltenham and Chesterfield. Both teams finishing with near identical records. Looks like the one extra goal for Cheltenhammade all the difference.
View attachment 74615
Annan-ymous
Finally, spare a thought for poor Annan. Relegated from League Two in Scotland in 2018, never to be seen again.
View attachment 74614
What next?
The data collected so far is very small, limited to just eight leagues spread across two countries. There is scope to add more leagues and include cup competitions. With the 2018 World Cup approaching I may even do a World Cup special to see if Scotland fulfil their potential and lift the coveted trophy sometime in the next millennia. I can only dream.
Happy to answer any questions on the tools used to create this.
