Club ratings (work in progress)

Work in progress: not calibrated

These are our own club ratings. We started them on 29 October 2026 and we are still testing and calibrating them. The method, the numbers and this page will change, sometimes a lot, and without notice. Treat every number here as a draft.

They are not predictions and not betting advice.
They already feed the Couchcall score in the leagues below: the strength of both clubs in every match, and the favourite in a match with no bookmaker line yet. Once a line exists, the market sets the favourite.
Ratings move with results. If you are saving a recent match, a club’s rating can give away how it went.

An Elo rating for every club in 6 competitions, updated every morning from the previous day’s results. Ratings as of 4 November 2026.

Premier League20 clubs rated

Work in progress. Not calibrated yet; these numbers will change as we test the method.

#	Club	Rating	Quality in the score	Rated matches
1	Arsenal	2019	1.00	1,262
2	Man City	1884	0.96	1,124
3	Aston Villa	1832	0.92	1,073
4	Liverpool	1827	0.87	1,253
5	Bournemouth	1795	0.83	540
6	Brighton	1792	0.79	643
7	Brentford	1739	0.75	528
8	Chelsea	1731	0.70	1,227
9	Man Utd	1729	0.66	1,259
10	Newcastle	1711	0.62	1,023
11	Leeds	1692	0.58	832
12	Spurs	1692	0.54	1,146
13	Everton	1686	0.49	1,027
14	Nottm Forest	1683	0.45	828
15	Fulham	1672	0.41	1,085
16	C Palace	1639	0.37	792
17	Sunderland	1582	0.33	768
18	Coventry	1529	0.28	474
19	Ipswich	1516	0.24	685
20	Hull	1452	0.20	797

La Liga20 clubs rated

Work in progress. Not calibrated yet; these numbers will change as we test the method.

#	Club	Rating	Quality in the score	Rated matches
1	Barcelona	1943	1.00	1,242
2	Real Madrid	1917	0.96	1,250
3	Atlético	1789	0.92	1,127
4	Betis	1710	0.87	929
5	Villarreal	1629	0.83	1,092
6	Real Sociedad	1609	0.79	919
7	Athletic	1599	0.75	1,066
8	Rayo	1591	0.70	517
9	Celta Vigo	1571	0.66	774
10	Valencia	1567	0.62	1,092
11	Sevilla	1556	0.58	1,126
12	Levante	1544	0.54	593
13	Alavés	1537	0.49	467
14	Elche	1533	0.45	238
15	Espanyol	1525	0.41	898
16	Osasuna	1515	0.37	811
17	Getafe	1504	0.33	828
18	Deportivo	1480	0.28	629
19	Málaga	1404	0.24	593
20	Racing	1397	0.20	391

Bundesliga18 clubs rated

Work in progress. Not calibrated yet; these numbers will change as we test the method.

#	Club	Rating	Quality in the score	Rated matches
1	Bayern	2011	1.00	1,126
2	Dortmund	1804	0.95	1,043
3	Leverkusen	1744	0.91	1,052
4	RB Leipzig	1702	0.86	497
5	Stuttgart	1676	0.81	934
6	Freiburg	1666	0.77	765
7	Hoffenheim	1599	0.72	653
8	Mainz	1588	0.67	742
9	Frankfurt	1577	0.62	845
10	Bremen	1576	0.58	916
11	Augsburg	1572	0.53	630
12	Hamburg	1521	0.48	863
13	Union Berlin	1520	0.43	608
14	Gladbach	1518	0.39	878
15	Elversberg	1514	0.34	90
16	Paderborn	1488	0.29	498
17	Cologne	1488	0.25	734
18	Schalke	1458	0.20	944

UEFA Champions League34 clubs rated

Work in progress. Not calibrated yet; these numbers will change as we test the method.

#	Club	Rating	Quality in the score	Rated matches
1	Arsenal	2019	1.00	1,262
2	Bayern	2011	0.98	1,126
3	PSG	1993	0.95	1,111
4	Barcelona	1943	0.93	1,242
5	Real Madrid	1917	0.90	1,250
6	Man City	1884	0.88	1,124
7	Inter Milan	1845	0.85	1,168
8	Aston Villa	1832	0.83	1,073
9	Liverpool	1827	0.81	1,253
10	Dortmund	1804	0.78	1,043
11	Atlético	1789	0.76	1,127
12	AS Roma	1770	0.73	1,169
13	Como	1764	0.71	122
14	Sporting	1760	0.69	780
15	Club Brugge	1738	0.66	886
16	Man Utd	1729	0.64	1,259
17	Betis	1710	0.61	929
18	RB Leipzig	1702	0.59	497
19	FC Porto	1698	0.56	837
20	PSV	1695	0.54	839
21	Napoli	1685	0.52	875
22	Galatasaray	1683	0.49	785
23	Stuttgart	1676	0.47	934
24	Bodo/Glimt	1661	0.44	60
25	Lens	1636	0.42	622
26	Villarreal	1629	0.39	1,092
27	Lille	1625	0.37	1,065
28	Fenerbahce	1596	0.34	814
29	Feyenoord	1571	0.32	738
30	Shakhtar	1566	0.30	213
31	LASK Linz	1468	0.27	48
32	AEK Athens	1439	0.25	103
33	Slavia Prague	1438	0.22	124
34	S Bratislava	1300	0.20	108

Not rated yet (fewer than 20 matches in our record), so the score uses points per game for: Sabah, Viking FK.

EFL Championship23 clubs rated

Work in progress. Not calibrated yet; these numbers will change as we test the method.

#	Club	Rating	Quality in the score	Rated matches
1	West Ham	1595	1.00	979
2	Southampton	1520	0.96	821
3	Wolves	1508	0.93	799
4	Boro	1462	0.89	1,099
5	Birmingham	1412	0.85	1,016
6	Burnley	1411	0.82	785
7	Swansea	1404	0.78	804
8	West Brom	1391	0.74	880
9	Norwich City	1388	0.71	789
10	Millwall	1387	0.67	659
11	Sheffield Utd	1378	0.64	586
12	Portsmouth	1369	0.60	501
13	Wrexham	1366	0.56	59
14	QPR	1344	0.53	819
15	Bristol City	1328	0.49	750
16	Stoke	1328	0.46	811
17	Blackburn	1321	0.42	1,067
18	Derby	1278	0.38	836
19	Cardiff	1267	0.34	785
20	Watford	1255	0.31	835
21	Charlton	1233	0.27	563
22	Preston	1208	0.24	659
23	Bolton	1197	0.20	743

Not rated yet (fewer than 20 matches in our record), so the score uses points per game for: Lincoln City.

2. Bundesliga18 clubs rated

Work in progress. Not calibrated yet; these numbers will change as we test the method.

#	Club	Rating	Quality in the score	Rated matches
1	Wolfsburg	1535	1.00	910
2	Hertha	1481	0.95	860
3	1. FC Nürnberg	1442	0.91	809
4	Heidenheim	1434	0.86	426
5	St. Pauli	1420	0.81	636
6	Kaiserslautern	1405	0.77	637
7	Hannover	1401	0.72	834
8	Magdeburg	1386	0.67	160
9	Bochum	1373	0.62	794
10	Bielefeld	1353	0.58	622
11	Darmstadt	1336	0.53	418
12	Holstein Kiel	1336	0.48	296
13	Karlsruher	1323	0.43	535
14	Greuther Furth	1300	0.39	601
15	D Dresden	1300	0.34	316
16	E Braunschweig	1274	0.29	398
17	Cottbus	1258	0.25	352
18	Osnabruck	1226	0.20	161

How the ratings work

Work in progress. Every setting below is a first choice and may change after calibration.

Each club has one number. After every match, points move from one club to the other: 20 times the margin weight times the difference between the result (1 for a win, half for a draw, 0 for a loss) and the result the ratings expected. The home side gets 80 points of home advantage in that expectation; a neutral ground gets none. The margin weight is 1 for a one-goal win, 1.5 for two goals and (11 + goals) / 8 for three or more, the rule the World Football Elo Ratings use for national teams.

Each league is close to a closed pool: its clubs mostly play each other, so the pool’s average stays near where its clubs started. A club starts at 1500 the first time it appears in one of the big five leagues, at 1300 in the top flight of the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Scotland or Turkey, at 1350 in the English or German second tier, and at 1300 when we first see it in a European competition. Strength then moves between pools in two ways: clubs going up and down between tiers carry their rating with them, and European matches, which count 1.5 times as much as a league match. The starting values and that weight were chosen by how well the ratings predicted European matches from 2014-15 on, the matches that test whether the leagues sit right against each other.

The record starts in the 2001-02 season for the five biggest leagues and the Champions League, in 2004-05 for the Europa League, in 2008-09 for the English and German second tiers and the top flights of the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Scotland and Turkey, and in 2021-22 for the Conference League. European qualifying rounds are included, because that is where clubs from smaller leagues meet each other and the big clubs.

In the Couchcall score. The ratings put every league on one scale, but for now the score’s quality term still compares a club with the rest of its own league, as the table did before: quality runs from 0.2 for the lowest-rated club in the league to 1 for the highest, by place in the league’s rating order, so a strong second-tier club scores like a strong top-flight club. On the shared scale (0 at 1250, about a weak club in the English or German second tier today; 1 at 1786, about a contender in one of the big five leagues) second-tier matches would lose about 16 points. Whether to switch is still open. When a match has no bookmaker line, the rating difference also sets the favourite and the closeness term. A club with fewer than 20 rated matches uses points per game instead. How the score works.

How we test it. Graded on 57,200 matches from the 2014-15 season on, before each match was played, the expected result scores 0.159 on the Brier scale (0 is perfect; always predicting the average result scores 0.183). That is a first check, not a calibration.

What is not settled yet

Known gaps

The settings (the step size, home advantage, starting values) come from a first search, not a calibration against bookmaker prices.
Ratings do not fall back towards the average between seasons, so a summer of transfers takes weeks to show.
Clubs from leagues outside our record only meet it in European matches, so their ratings rest on few games.
The Veikkausliiga, Liiga, the SHL and the NHL are not rated yet; those scores still use points per game.
Italian, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Belgian, Scottish and Turkish league matches, and the Europa League and Conference League, reach the ratings only when we rebuild the record by hand. Until the next rebuild, those clubs move with their Champions League results alone.
Most of the 2023-24 season of the 2. Bundesliga and of the Scottish Premiership is missing from our record.
Clubs from leagues we do not record start from one shared value, whatever their league’s strength.

We will say here when the ratings have been calibrated. Until then, read them as a draft.