Football Team Rankings Over Time
Explore and compare English football teams’ ratings, from 1888 to today.
Loading match history (about 22 MB on the first visit)…
Hover or tap for a rating and date. On touch screens, swipe to scroll the page; choose “Explore chart” to pan and pinch, then “Scroll page” when finished. With a mouse, drag to pan or Ctrl + scroll to zoom. Click a team’s name to hide or show its line.
Highs & lows
All-time records, including matches outside the current view. Click a maximum or minimum to explore that date. For tied records, the first date is shown.
Ratings are the scores recorded after each match (higher is stronger), rather than league positions. Lines stop at each team’s last recorded match, with breaks for gaps longer than a year. Data: English league results and rankings. Club colours: EnglishTeamLogos.csv.
English football team-strength ratings since 1888
Compare the rise and fall of clubs using their modelled strength after each recorded league match. Add several teams by typing their names, inspect points on the chart, and use the highest/lowest-rating cards to jump to notable periods.
A rating is not a league position
The vertical axis is a strength rating, where a higher value means a stronger estimated team. It is not first place, second place and so on. The ratings come from the Bayesian Kalman football model, not a simple count of recent wins.
Data coverage and interpretation
The chart reads the post-match home and away ratings in EnglandLeagueResults_wRanks.csv. The underlying English league results database begins in 1888; individual clubs appear only where they have recorded ratings. Gaps between points can reflect periods outside the covered leagues and do not imply additional observations.
Use the league-table generator for actual standings, or turn the latest strengths into match outcome probabilities. Comparisons over distant eras depend on the model and should not be interpreted as observed matches between those teams.