Scotland–Albania

2–0

HT 0–0

Kick-off: Monday, 10 September 2018 at 18:45
Status: Match Finished

Referee

There's no card data for this referee from before this match yet. We don't invent an average; it will appear here once the data exists.

Model prediction

Why this prediction?

The model puts the most likely outcome at 55.0%: “Scotland to win”. Second comes “a draw” at 25.9%.
The highest double chance value is 80.9% (1X — Scotland win or draw).
These values were computed from 963 past matches.

This is a prediction, not a guarantee; a probability is not a certainty.

These sentences are built by a fixed template; every number in them comes straight from the model's computation, none invented while the text was written.

Scotland to win55.0%

Draw25.9%

Albania to win19.1%

When the model has said 55–60% in the past, 1,696 of 2,854 predictions were correct (59.4%). Accuracy record →

Double chance

1X — Scotland win or draw

These three values add up to 200%, not 100% — and that is not a mistake. The options are not mutually exclusive; every outcome is counted in two of them. For the same reason 1X plus X2 exceeds 100% by exactly the probability of a draw (25.9%).

What these probabilities rest on

Expected goals comes out of a team's attack weighed against its opponent's defence. A strong attack is damped when it meets a strong defence — which is why comparing the ratings on their own is misleading.

Scotland

Attack: Scotland score above the league average (15% more).

Opponent's defence: Albania's defence is close to the league average (0.86×), so it doesn't move the expectation much.

Albania

Attack: Albania score below the league average (19% fewer).

Opponent's defence: Scotland's defence is close to the league average (0.95×), so it doesn't move the expectation much.

Week 2 of the season. This prediction was computed from previous seasons. Summer transfers, budget changes and squad rebuilds aren't in the ratings yet — the model can only see that a team has been rebuilt once new results come in.

We measured this: the bias is only pronounced in the opening week. In this week the model's overall accuracy does not separate from the rest of the season — that is, we found no measurable flaw. The one tendency across all opening weeks is that home wins are called slightly too often (said 43.0%, got 41.9%; n=583).

This sample is small and not statistically established, which is why we do not correct the model for it. The correction we tried (pulling probabilities toward the league average) didn't win on holdout, so it wasn't added. Read opening-week predictions with a little more caution.