Supercomputer · Premiership

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

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Projecting the Scottish Premiership through the split

Twelve clubs meet three times each, and then after 33 matches the Premiership divides into a top six and a bottom six, with five further games inside each half. That single rule governs this projection: once the split happens, a bottom-six club cannot finish above a top-six club however many points it goes on to take.

The 33-match cut-off also leaves the fixture list unbalanced, with some clubs ending the season on 20 home games and others on 18. At the foot of the table there are two danger lines rather than one: 12th is relegated automatically, while 11th faces the Scottish Championship play-off winner over two legs.

Scottish Premiership: questions about the split

How does the split affect the projection?

It caps outcomes. Before matchday 33 the model simulates the full 12-club table. Afterwards, seventh is the ceiling for anyone in the bottom half and sixth is the floor for anyone in the top half, so late form can change points totals without changing final position.

Does winning the Premiership guarantee Champions League football?

Not any more. Scotland lost its automatic league-phase berth from 2025/26, so the champions now have to come through Champions League qualifying instead, as Celtic discovered when they went out at the play-off round. The title remains far and away the most valuable finish, but it is no longer a guarantee.

Is one relegation place the whole story?

No. Twelfth goes down automatically, but 11th enters a two-legged play-off against the club that comes through the Scottish Championship play-offs and can be relegated that way. A side shown just above the relegation column here is not necessarily safe.

▸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.