Methodology: how selections are made

A plain description of the process. We publish the method, not the numbers behind it.

1. Data

Fixtures and final scores come from public football results data covering 22 leagues across England, Scotland, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Turkey and Greece. We do not scrape bookmaker websites, and we never invent fixtures, injuries or scores. If a data feed fails, the site says so and publishes nothing new.

2. One model per league

Each league has its own statistical model that rates every team's attacking and defensive strength from that league's past results, with more weight on recent matches and an allowance for home advantage. Each model's settings are tested on seasons it was not tuned on. Leagues are never mixed inside a model: a team's strength is only compared with others in the same competition.

3. Choosing selections

Every match gets our most likely result: a home win, a draw or an away win. We rank each round's matches from most to least confident, which lets you build an accumulator of any size from the top of the list, within one league or across several. Our featured accumulator for a league is the three or four home or away wins we are most sure of; if fewer than three clear our internal confidence bar, we feature none and say so.

4. Frozen before kickoff

Selections are recorded before kickoff and cannot be changed. Every outcome is added to the results page, including losses and any void matches.

5. Learning from results

We compare every forecast against the actual result and score it. Each week every league's model settings are re-tested on past seasons and replaced only if they would have scored better. In testing, our models are well calibrated and far better than guessing, but, like most statistical models, they do not reliably beat the bookmakers' own prices, so nothing here is a guaranteed or "safe" tip.

What we do not do

We do not publish odds or percentage chances (a ranking, not a number), claim banker bets, or promise profit. Odds change constantly: always check the current price and the terms of any offer with your bookmaker.