Weekly review
Week of 21 September
21 September 2026 – 27 September 2026 · 546 words
Between 21 September and 27 September we had published a prediction before kick-off for 87 fixtures, across 6 days and 8 competitions. We called 37 of them correctly, 42.5%.
The outcome we almost never call
Of 87 fixtures, 25 ended level — 28.7% of them. We called a draw in none of them. Not rarely: never, and that is worth explaining rather than apologising for. The three probabilities on each card come from simulating the two sides' scoring rates independently and counting how often each outcome appears. That method has a built-in ceiling on the draw: across this period the highest draw probability we published was 27.3%, and the nearest a draw ever came to leading its fixture was 9.7 points short. For the draw to top a card, two teams would have to be so exactly matched that neither win is likelier than the tie — which is rarer than a tie itself. So the headline call cannot name the outcome that happens a quarter of the time, and roughly a quarter of our misses are lost before kick-off. Independence is also the part we would change first. Real football scores are not independent at the low end: 0-0 and 1-1 happen more often than two separate rates predict, which is why the standard correction in the literature exists and why our draw numbers are likely a little low across the board. Until that is fixed, the probability we print for the draw is the figure worth reading on a tight fixture — not the call above it.
Where we were most wrong
Bulgaria against Luxembourg, in Int: UEFA Nations League, finished 1–2. We had published Bulgaria to beat Luxembourg at 70.5%, the largest confidence we placed on anything that did not happen in this period. It stays on the record. A site that reports only its hits is not reporting a record, it is reporting a selection.
Against last week
Against the week before: 237 settled fixtures then at 46.0%, 87 now at 42.5%, a move of -3.5 points. Volume changed more than accuracy did — down 63% — so the two figures are not measuring quite the same thing: a week with more fixtures is usually a week with more of the competitions we read least well. More useful than the headline: in the 50 to 70% range, where most of our calls sit, we were 1.5 points above our stated confidence last week and 1.9 points below it this one.
What we covered
The period spanned 8 competitions, none with enough fixtures to say anything useful about individually.
How to read all this
One week of 87 fixtures settles very little on its own. A percentage point either way on a sample this size is noise, and we would rather say so than dress it up. What these reviews are for is the shape that emerges when several of them sit side by side: whether a stated 65% keeps landing near 65%, whether the gap between our number and the market's keeps costing us, whether a competition we read badly this week is still being read badly in three. Those are answerable, and they are answerable in public, which is the only reason to publish the bad figures alongside the good ones.
Every figure here comes from predictions published before the match day — never from a re-run after the results were known. Results come from public fixture feeds. Every period we have reviewed → How the model is measured →