Hello and Welcome

Thanks for being here. I hope is the first of many articles / reads on the modern religion that is football. Put simply, the whole purpose of Notes on Football is to better understand football performance. I’ll be focusing mainly on the Premier League in England, but I’ll also dip my toe into Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A, Germany’s Bundesliga, and the French Ligue Un, too.

I’ll try not to be too dry when talking numbers either. Number talk can be a bit boring so what I’ll try to do is translate into everyday language. Any references to stats and the like will be help tell a story.

How it all came about

The genesis of Notes on Football really came about through betting, but I must stress Notes on Football isn’t going to be about betting. I developed a football ratings system a number of years ago to give myself an edge against the bookies. These ratings were themselves influenced by my earlier career as a horse racing analyst, way back when I had a full head of hair. The process of analysing sports performance, and uncovering how sports work, is worthy of jotting down regardless of whether or not there is a bet at the end of it.

After tweaking and refining down the years, my ratings are a helpful starting point for analysing a football match. You’ll see the ratings a lot as they are the basis of all the analysis work that goes into each league, match and player I take a look at. The ratings are also supplemented by match-specific data points so we can get a firmer idea of what happened in a match, and what might happen in a future match.

Sometimes right, sometimes wrong

There are going to be occasions where I get things wrong, but that goes with the territory. Every new weekend of football matches is another learning opportunity to be that bit more accurate the next time round.

One thing worth addressing is “Why start up this blog now, when the season is nearly over?”. That’s a fair question! Really, it’s in the spirit of “no time like the present”. Rather than wait until the next season comes round in 2026/27, let’s just get on with it. There is ALWAYS something to talk about when it comes to the beautiful game.

Anyway… I hope you enjoy reading. Let’s see where we end up going with this thing.

Garry