... and here is the calendar year table in smaller chunks for anyone struggling to view it as one enormous image:

As is traditional, here's a calendar year table for 2025: open.substack.com/pub/experime...

Which club has gone the longest without topping the table? On Saturday afternoon, Stoke’s 3-1 win over Derby put them top of the Championship table.

Stoke weren't able to end their wait, although they'll get another chance if their game with Sheffield Wednesday goes ahead.

I've written something on the longest waits for a team to sit top and bottom of a table here, and the latter is even more interesting: www.experimental361.com/p/which-club...

By my reckoning if Stoke are still top of the Championship at the end of today, it'll be the first time since 27 April 2008 that they've ended a day top of a league table. At 17 years 3 months 12 days it's the longest such drought among any of the current PL and EFL teams.

I'm not aware of any precedent, but after back-to-back promotions (and receiving a ton of investment) it's not the worst idea.

On the "to do" list is a big study over multiple seasons to see if there is an optimum churn level for different situations, or if it depends on the quality of recruitment.

I've created squad retention charts at the top European leagues (Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Netherlands & Portugal): experimental361.substack.com/p/squad-rete...

I thought there was a bug when I saw Alverca's profile, but it turns out they have only one player left from last season.

I think my simpler model has over-rated them a bit, as I can see they were 4th-5th best elsewhere.

These are only meant to be summaries rather than team ratings (which I still haven't switched back on), but you can (sort of) see goal totals by which stripe the team occupies in the attacking chart.

As the new EFL season is almost here, I've updated the fixture difficulty grids as promised: www.experimental361.com/p/analysing-...

The PL version will also get a refresh in early August.

I am continuing to refresh the squad retention graphics on a weekly-ish basis: www.experimental361.com/p/squad-rete...

Leyton Orient now without 7 of their 8 most-used players from last season.

Following on from the Premier League versions last week, here are fixture difficulty grids for the three EFL divisions: www.experimental361.com/p/analysing-...

Trying out another new template: recalculating the league table after each minute of play to show when teams performed relatively well (and not so well).

Each mini-chart highlights an interesting cut-off for a team.

Full explanation via the link: www.experimental361.com/p/minute-by-...

I've started tracking squad retention for every Premier League and EFL club - this page will be refreshed regularly during the transfer window: open.substack.com/pub/experime...

I had a quick script set up to copy the full text list off the official Premier League page as soon as it was published and turn them into an analyse-able table.

As is traditional, here's a Premier League difficulty grid, smashing together the newly-released fixtures with the latest betting odds. open.substack.com/pub/experime...

I've finally gotten around to making some post-season graphics (as per these examples), including a new version of the squad age profiles - all accessible via this link: www.experimental361.com/p/plans-for-...

... and here it is broken up into more manageable chunks:

Ending the year with another traditional post - here's a 2024 table for the English leagues: www.experimental361.com/p/2024-table...

Definitions are tricky to get right and there are always compromises e.g. they have to be as simple and unambiguous as possible for collection staff to apply consistently in real time.

It ultimately comes down to how data companies define things e.g. Opta’s assist definition begins with “The final touch from a teammate…” and explicitly excludes own goals.

An assist is often classified as a type of pass, which wouldn’t strictly fit with a ball that goes to an opponent.

I thought I'd kick off the Bluesky era with one of the all-time classics: scatter graphics for the Premier League and EFL.

A full set of graphics for each division can be found via the links in this post: www.experimental361.com/p/scatter-gr...

Lords of Waterdeep Deploy agents and hire adventurers to expand your control over the city of Waterdeep.

Bit late to this, but I have similar requirements (love Ticket to Ride) and can recommend Lords of Waterdeep. Easy to get into, lots of replayability, works well with 2 players but goes up to 5 (or 6 with the expansion):

boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11...

Made one for soccer analytics dorks go.bsky.app/Hu8kEtH