Premiership · Scotland · 1st Phase - 3

Heart Of Midlothian–Motherwell

3–3

HT 0–1

Kick-off: Saturday, 23 August 2025 at 14:00
Status: Match Finished
Venue: Tynecastle Park, Edinburgh

What the model said, and what happened

Ended level — we gave the draw 25%double chance: correct

This verdict goes into the public record unchanged; we do not filter out the ones we get wrong. The model's track record

Goals and red cards

21'MotherwellCallum Slattery (assist: E. Watt)
49'MotherwellTawanda Jethro Maswanhise (assist: E. Just)
62'MotherwellM. Emmanuel (assist: E. Just)
65'Heart Of MidlothianH. Milne
74'Heart Of MidlothianCláudio Braga (assist: Blair Spittal)
83'Heart Of MidlothianCláudio Braga

Match statistics

Match statistics
Heart Of Midlothian		Motherwell
19	Shots	9
9	Shots on target	3
16	Shots inside the box	6
0	Goalkeeper saves	6
9	Corners	3
1	Offsides	5
49%	Possession	51%
405	Passes	436
307	Accurate passes

What we expected, and what happened

Expected goals before kick-off: Heart Of Midlothian 1.84 · Motherwell 0.98. On the pitch: 3-3.
Shots Heart Of Midlothian 19 · Motherwell 9; on target 9 and 3.

Referee

John Beaton, Scotland→

4.67

yellows per match

0.38

reds per match

matches of data

Model prediction

Why this prediction?

The model puts the most likely outcome at 57.6%: “Heart Of Midlothian to win”. Second comes “a draw” at 24.8%.
Behind that distribution are the expected goals: 1.77 for Heart Of Midlothian, 0.91 for Motherwell.
The highest double chance value is 82.4% (1X — Heart Of Midlothian win or draw).
These values were computed from 666 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.

Heart Of Midlothian to win57.6%

Draw24.8%

Motherwell to win17.6%

When the model has said 55–60% in the past, 1,158 of 1,982 predictions were correct (58.4%). Accuracy record →

14	Fouls	19

3	Yellow cards	2

0	Red cards	0

First half

Actual: 0–1

Heart Of Midlothian lead at half-time41.1%

Level at half-time40.3%

Motherwell lead at half-time18.6%

First-half double chance

1X — Heart Of Midlothian ahead or level81.4%

12 — not level at half-time59.7%

X2 — level or Motherwell ahead58.9%

These values are not a fraction of the full-match prediction; they come from a separate model trained on the first-half scores of 666 matches. Its edge over the base rate is markedly smaller than the full-match model's — the measured figure is on the accuracy record. Read them more cautiously. First-half goal markets are not published because they failed to beat the base rate.

Expected fouls and corners

Fouls

Heart Of Midlothian: at least 11Actual: 14
Motherwell: at least 10Actual: 19

Corners

Heart Of Midlothian: at least 6Actual: 9
Motherwell: at least 3Actual: 3

These figures are set to hold in at least 60% of matches; in the rest the count comes in below them. No upper bound is stated — we make no "at most" claim. Yellow cards were measured and are not published: there our model did not beat the historical average.

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.

How many goals Heart Of Midlothian score1.84

Attack: Heart Of Midlothian score close to the league average.

Opponent's defence: Motherwell's defence is close to the league average (1.08×), so it doesn't move the expectation much.

Result: These two effects give an expectation of 1.84 goals (including home advantage).

How many goals Motherwell score0.98

Attack: Motherwell score close to the league average.

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

Result: These two effects give an expectation of 0.98 goals (including the away penalty).

Most likely scorelines

1–112.6%1–011.4%2–011.0%

A single scoreline is always less likely than an outcome: “home win” is the sum of 1-0, 2-0, 2-1 and dozens more. So the most likely single score can be a draw while the most likely outcome is a home win; the two do not contradict each other.

Week 3 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.