RANGERS would this season be considered a “mid-table” team in the English Premier League while Celtic’s season would rank them “firmly” in the relegation positions, according to an expert study.
21st Club, a worldwide football software company and consultancy, ranks teams based on their overall quality, regardless of the league the play in.
Taking into consideration results in European competition and the success of former players to gauge their place in a ranking system.
The company’s findings were published in an interview with the Athletic, which focused on how Rangers and Celtic would fare if they had been dropped into the English Premiership this season without the extra TV revenue enjoyed by those who compete in the division.
Omar Chaudhuri, the chief intelligence officer at 21st Club explained the standings, he said: “For Scotland, you can tell Rangers are better than Celtic this year because of results domestically, and you aggregate the results and placings of the league table.”
Steven Gerrard’s Rangers have an excellent record in Europe, with consistent positive results in the Europa League.
READ MORE: Kris Boyd's Sky Sports Celtic vs St Mirren omission explained
While Celtic also have big wins in the recent past, notably beating Lazio home and away in the Europa League last season, this term’s showing included two 4-1 defeats by Sparta Prague.
Neil Lennon’s side were also knocked out of the Champions League qualifiers by Ferencvaros.
“The Premier League is a step up in quality and you take into account results and the league table positions there too,” continued Chaudhuri.
"Then you factor in European results… Through this approach, you can get a general sense of where the team might sit.
“Rangers this season are pretty solidly mid-table Premier League level,” Chaudhuri added.
“So comparable with the likes of Wolves, Aston Villa, Everton, which is incredibly impressive given where they were five or six years ago, and within the context of them having a lot less money.
READ MORE: Rangers duo face Europa League ban sweat ahead of Antwerp clash
“Celtic, with the season they’re having at the moment, are obviously not doing well. We’d rank them firmly in relegation, around the West Brom level. That’s Celtic’s lowest placing since we started doing these rankings about 10, 11 years ago. Celtic are usually around 14th or 15th, roughly that level.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel