Building a Fixture Difficulty Rating
"Who's got the easier run-in?" is one of the most asked questions of any season, and it's usually answered by eyeballing a list of opponents. I wanted something sturdier: a single number per fixture that captures how hard a match really is.
Inputs that matter
A fixture's difficulty is more than the name of the opponent. I blend several factors, each weighted by how much it actually shifts results:
| Factor | Weight |
|---|---|
| Opponent | High |
| Venue | Medium |
| Rest days | Low |
Opponent strength does most of the work — a strength rating derived from performance, not just league position. Venue adjusts for home advantage. Rest days and congestion add a smaller nudge for teams running on fumes or returning from European trips.
Turning it into a score
Each factor is converted to a common scale and combined into one rating, which I normalize so the numbers are easy to compare across fixtures and across teams. The result is a tidy figure you can read at a glance and add up across a stretch of matches to compare run-ins fairly.
- Rate each opponent's true strength.
- Adjust for home or away.
- Apply a small modifier for rest and fixture congestion.
- Normalize to a consistent scale.
A good difficulty rating doesn't predict the result. It tells you how steep the hill is before the team starts climbing.
A reality check from the odds
A difficulty rating is only worth trusting if it lines up with what actually happens on the pitch. The cleanest yardstick I have is the betting market: odds are the bookmakers' difficulty rating, priced in real money. So I pulled every match in my database between 1 July 2025 and 12 January 2026 and looked at the tightest band of clear favorites — games priced between 1.40 and 1.50 to win.
Odds in that range imply a win probability of roughly 67% to 71%. If the market is honest, the actual win rate should land right in that window. Here's what the results say:
| Favorite | Odds band | Matches | Wins | Win rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home | 1.40–1.50 | 179 | 124 | 69.3% |
| Away | 1.40–1.50 | 58 | 40 | 69.0% |
You can explore the home-favorite set yourself in the Game Statistics Explorer, with home win odds pre-filtered to 1.40–1.50.
Two things stand out. First, both numbers sit almost exactly where the odds say they should — the market, in aggregate, prices these favorites remarkably well. Second, home and away favorites at the same price convert at virtually the same rate (69.3% vs. 69.0%). Once a team is a strong enough favorite to be quoted at 1.4–1.5, the venue has already been baked into the price, so it stops adding extra signal on top.
When a favorite is priced at 1.40–1.50, expect them to win roughly seven times in ten — whether they're at home or away.
That's exactly the kind of calibration I want from a difficulty rating: not a crystal ball for any single game, but a number that's honest about the long run.
It's a model, so it won't catch everything — an injury crisis or a rotated squad can rewrite a match overnight. But as a way to compare schedules objectively, a single honest number beats a gut feeling every time.