Evaluating team performance

SoccerSTATS.com - updated on: 28 Mar 2025

In league competitions, team performance is often evaluated according to well-known indicators such as Total Points, Points per Game or Winning Percentage. To help provide more context in evaluating team results, the Points Performance Index evaluates Points Per Game in light of an additional factor: played opponents' Points Per Game.

"It all evens out at the end of the season". We know the tune, whether it means arguing about how unlucky our team has been in regards to points lost, suspensions, refereeing decisions, or regarding the fact that other teams have been lucky not to have faced as many tough opponents so far.

At the end of the season, when each team has played the same number of matches, against all the top teams and all the easier oppositions, it is clear to everyone which teams ended up having a successful campaign and which teams did not.

However when the league is half-way through, althouth the team rankings, points and points per game can be useful indicators in evaluating team performance, such values only reflect performance within a specific context. That context is actually the opponents each team has played against, and whether each match has been played at home or away, as discussed in Evaluating matches difficulty-level.

Overrated or underrated?

Let's say our team is ranked just one point behind their direct competitors, with a home game in hand against a lower-level team. Are we on course? Pending a win in that game to catch up, we would think we pretty much are. Shame for those 2 points dropped last week against that supposedly easy opponent though.

Now the league table might be telling us a story we like to hear. And with that game in hand to factor-in, if we would only be looking at Points Per Game, instead of total points, our team would even be ranked above its direct competitors.

Yet in order to get an idea of the kind of performance our team has actually achieved compared to its competitors, we will want to look at where and against which opponents our team's points have been picked up, and the same would apply to the competitors' points.

Evaluating the opposition

To evaluate the opposition's level, we use the same metric described on the Run-in analysis page: an average value taking into account the home Points Per Game (PPG) of all the opponents faced away, and the away PPG of all the opponents played at home. The resulting value is labelled as "Opponents PPG" on the Relative Performance table.

Calculating the Points Performance Index

The PPI calculation attempts to come up with a rating that provides more weight to the team's more meaningful results.

For example, if the last two matches played by a team are (1) a home win against a low-level team, and (2) an away win at the league leaders', both results will be valued exactly the same in the league table and in the Points Per Game calculations, yet the latter can be seen as more meaningful in terms of performance.

Each result obtained by the team will carry its own "weight" represented by the opponent PPG, and the combined opposition strength for all played matches by a team is represented by the Opponents PPG value in the table.

To calculate the Points Performance Index, we multiply the team's Points Per Game with the team's Opponents PPG value.

More information on the Points Performance Index is available on the Relative performance page.

Calculating the Projected Points

The Projected Points table shows, for each team, a calculated points projection based on the team's Points Per Game (PPG), the PPG of played opponents and the PPG of future opponents.

For each team, the PPG of played opponents is compared to the PPG of future oppoennts, and this calculation results in a ratio.

When the played opponents PPG is higher than the future opponents PPG, the ratio is higher than 1. When the ratio is below 1, this means that the future opponents PPG is higher than the played opponents PPG.

That ratio is then applied to team's existing PPG, to create a 'Projected PPG' for the team. This 'Projected PPG' is multiplied by the number of remaining games, and the result is named 'Projected Points'.

More information on how the Projected Points are calculated is listed in the description below the Projected Points table, for example on the Projected Points page for the Serie A.

Calculating Performance Ratings

The Performance Rating is based on what we call Performance Points (pPts). Unlike typical Points, where a draw is rewarded at one third of a win, Performance Points are calculated so as to value a draw as half a win.

The typical 3-1-0 point system provides a clear incentive for teams to aim for the win. In the past, the old 2-1-0 system could cause some teams to aim too often for a draw, which could cause some games to become less interesting to watch, especially from a neutral spectator's perspective.

However calculating 'Performance Points' on the base of 1 point for a win, 0.5 point for a draw and 0 point for a defeat allows to take a different look at team performance, as illustrated in the following example:

Let's assume Team A and Team B have each played 10 games.

Team A has the following record:
5 Wins, 0 Draw, 5 Defeats (Total: 15 points | 5 performance points)

Team B has the following record:
2 Wins, 8 Draws, 0 Defeat (Total: 14 points | 6 performance points)

So Team A has been more effective at picking up points than Team B therefore if both teams were to repeat those exact result patterns until the end of the season, Team A will logically finish the season above Team B in the league table.

Now when it comes to analysing performance, one could argue that a team like Team B, that has remained undefeated, winning twice, should not necessarily be considered as having demonstrated a weaker performance than a team that lost half of their matches, as Team A did.

With the classic points system, Team A has a PPG (Points Per Game) of 1.5 and Team B has a lower PPG: 1.4.

With the Performance Points system, Team A has a pPPG (Performance Points Per Game) of 50% and Team B has a higher pPPG: 60%.

The Performance Rating (PR) is calculated based on the team's Performance Points Per Game (pPPG) and the pPPG of the opponents already played by the team. It is the average of those two values.

Using the same logic as with the Points Performance Index, the Opponents pPPG value is calculated by taking into account the Away pPPG of opponents played at home and the Home pPPG of opponents played away.

More information on the Performance Rating calculation is available on the Performance Rating page.

An example of the Performance Rating table is visible on the Performance Rating page for the Serie A.