Strength of schedule

Difficulty = opponent pre-match Elo minus the match’s home-field adjustment when playing at home, plus that adjustment when playing away. Higher means harder. Absolute compares opponent strength independently of the club facing them. Relative subtracts the club’s own pre-match Elo for played fixtures, or its latest post-result Kelo for upcoming fixtures. Negative is easier; positive is harder. The relative run score is the mean of these fixture-level gaps, so historical games retain the club strength at that time. It is not a win probability.

Absolute color boundaries are the nearest-rank 33rd and 67th percentiles of all rated team-fixture observations in this season (played plus remaining; each match has a home and away perspective). Ratings are rounded to whole Elo points for classification; ties remain in the same band, so counts may differ slightly from equal thirds. Next-five fixtures are not counted twice. Boundaries are shared across every chart and may move when ratings or fixtures update. They are not derived from chart axis limits.

Relative difficulty bands are asymmetric: easy below −150 Elo, medium from −150 to −51, and hard at −50 or higher. These product definitions recognize near-peer opponents as hard matches even when the club is slightly favored; they are not an established football standard or calibrated win probabilities. Continuous colors interpolate through fixed anchors at −400, −200, −150, −50, and +300 Elo (light green, green, amber, red, dark red), with colors clamped outside that range. The numeric scores and chart positions remain the original Elo gaps, with no club-specific rescaling. Values are averaged at full precision, then displayed as whole numbers.

Kelo is Kneeslide’s Premier League rating model, using the active version shared with the table predictor. Played fixtures use ratings captured before that date’s results. Run scores are arithmetic means. Click a difficulty heading to sort descending (hardest first) or ascending; Club sorts alphabetically.

Venue adjustment converts the predictor’s home/away scoring-base ratio to equivalent Elo points: 200 ÷ beta × ln(home scoring base ÷ away scoring base). This is distinct from the home-advantage parameter used when updating Elo. Remaining fixtures use each club’s latest post-result Kelo rating through 2026-11-08; these are estimates rather than future pre-match ratings. Next five means the next five scheduled unplayed league fixtures. Both opponent and own-club rating dates are shown in upcoming tooltips.

Recent match supplements and provenance are included in the results download.