Supercomputer · Eredivisie

Plays the rest of the season 10,000 times and shows how often each club wins.

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Why seventh place still matters in the Eredivisie

Eighteen clubs play 34 rounds, and only the first three places carry a guaranteed European berth: the champion into the Champions League league phase, the runner-up into Champions League qualifying and third into the Europa League. Everything from fourth to seventh feeds a play-off instead, which is why the Dutch table stays live far deeper than most.

Those European play-offs are short and brutal. Two single-match rounds, a semi-final and a final, with home advantage going to the better-placed club, and the winner enters Conference League qualifying. At the other end, 17th and 18th are relegated outright while 16th is dragged into a promotion-relegation play-off with Eerste Divisie opposition.

Eredivisie projection: common questions

What are the Eredivisie European play-offs?

A mini-knockout for the clubs finishing just below the direct European places, currently fourth to seventh. It runs as two single-leg rounds rather than home-and-away ties, the higher-placed side hosts, and the eventual winner takes a place in Conference League qualifying.

How many teams are relegated from the Eredivisie?

Two directly: 17th and 18th drop into the Eerste Divisie at the final whistle of the season. The 16th-placed club then enters a promotion-relegation play-off against Eerste Divisie sides, so climbing clear of the automatic drop zone does not by itself guarantee another Eredivisie campaign.

Is fourth place enough for European football in the Netherlands?

Not on its own. Fourth currently earns a place in the European play-offs, not a European berth. Only the top three qualify directly, so a club sitting fourth in the projection still has to win two knockout matches in May to reach the continent.

▸How does the supercomputer work?

Every remaining fixture is simulated with a Poisson model: each club gets an attack rating and a defence rating from the goals it has scored and conceded this season, and the expected goals of a match come from combining one side's attack with the other's defence, plus a moderate home advantage.

Before a ball is kicked the model does not start from zero: each club begins with a prior strength built from last season's finish and the market value of its squad, with the tails capped so no extreme is absurd. That starting point hands over weight to real results as they arrive, and by around matchday ten only the actual goals are talking.

The remaining season is played 10,000 times in a separate browser process, so the page never freezes. The title, top-four, top-six and relegation percentages are simply how often each outcome happened across those 10,000 seasons, and each club's points range covers the central 90% of its simulated finishes.

What the model does not know: injuries, transfers, sanctions, European fixtures or motivation. It uses goals and only goals — which is why it is in beta.