Methodology

What GoalPost is

GoalPost is an independent football discovery and intelligence platform. The scores, fixtures, and statistics you see are sourced from a licensed sports-data provider (API-Football). Everything described on this page — GPR, GPS, match predictions, and Fair Market Value (FMV) — is built on top of that raw data by GoalPost itself. None of it is licensed from a bookmaker, a scouting agency, or another ratings provider, and none of it is sourced from betting markets as a primary input.

GPR — GoalPost Power Rating

GPR is GoalPost’s composite strength rating for a club or national team, expressed on a 1–99 scale. It blends a team’s underlying attacking and defensive output with its recent form, and applies a strength-of-schedule adjustment so a rating earned against weaker opposition is weighted differently from one earned against strong opposition. Teams with a very small sample of matches (early in a season, or a newly promoted side) are damped toward a more conservative estimate rather than allowed to swing on a handful of results.

You’ll see GPR on club and national-team pages, in the Team Screener, and as the basis for rankings like Team of the Week. It is one number meant to answer “how good is this team right now” — not a prediction of any single match on its own.

GPS — GoalPost Player Score

GPS is GoalPost’s composite rating for an individual player, also expressed on a 1–99 scale. It’s built from position-relative percentiles: a player’s underlying actions (progression, chance creation, defensive work, discipline, availability, and more, depending on role) are measured against other players in comparable positions, not against the entire league at once. That percentile profile is then combined into a single score so players at different positions can still be compared on one scale.

GPS drives the Player Screener, appears on player pages, and feeds Player of the Match and Team of the Week selection. A 7-day movement indicator (GPS Δ) shows whether a player is trending up or down, not just where they sit today.

Match predictions

Pre-match win/draw/loss percentages come from a statistical scoreline model (a Poisson-based approach with a low-score correction, following the well-established Dixon–Coles method from the football analytics literature), not from copying a bookmaker’s odds. The model is fed by:

• each team’s season-long attacking and defensive rates, adjusted for venue (home/away);
• recent form, blended in more heavily when the in-competition sample is still thin;
• head-to-head history between the two sides, weighted by how much recent data exists;
• a downward adjustment for confirmed injuries or suspensions to key players; and
• a smaller blended weight toward our data provider’s own published win/draw/loss figures, used as an ensemble anchor rather than the primary signal.

The output is a full probability split (home win / draw / away win) plus an implied scoreline distribution, shown before kickoff on covered fixtures. Once the match is live, the win-probability bar updates using the score and the clock against that pre-match baseline — it does not yet weigh live momentum, tactical substitutions, or red cards, which is a known limitation we’re upfront about.

Predictions, GPR, GPS, and FMV are all statistical estimates for informational and entertainment purposes. None of them are betting advice, financial advice, or a guarantee of any outcome — see our Terms of Service for the full disclaimer.

FMV — Fair Market Value

FMV is GoalPost’s own estimate of what a player would be worth in today’s transfer market. It is not an official price, an agent’s asking figure, or a confirmed transfer fee — it’s a model estimate, built from more than a dozen weighted components that include a player’s age curve, their GPS rating, playing time and injury availability, contract situation, the strength of their league, and positional scarcity. Every player’s valuation page shows the components that built that specific number, not just the headline figure.

How we grade ourselves — The Ledger

Estimates are only useful if they’re checked. Every scored prediction is compared against the actual result after the final whistle and logged automatically — nothing is scored by hand, and nothing is removed from the record after the fact. As real transfers land with reported fees, they’re compared against what GoalPost’s FMV said at the time, on the same public page.

Editorial commentary

Match previews, post-match recaps, and milestone storylines on GoalPost are generated with the help of language models, grounded in GoalPost’s own statistical data (the actual final score, the actual standings movement, recent form) rather than written free-form. Commentary follows fixed grounding rules — for example, points are always derived from the real score rather than invented, and head-to-head references are phrased as “on record” or “in the last N meetings” rather than implying a complete all-time count, since our historical data only goes back so far.

Limitations, honestly

• GPR, GPS, and predictions are statistical estimates. Upsets happen; models don’t predict them.
• Live in-play win probability is score-and-clock based against the pre-match model — it does not yet incorporate live match events like momentum shifts or red cards.
• Coverage depth varies by competition. Top-tier leagues and major international competitions get full statistical coverage; smaller competitions get a lighter dataset, which can mean a thinner sample behind any given rating.
• FMV is a model estimate, not a market-confirmed value — treat it the same way you’d treat any single analyst’s valuation, alongside other sources, not as the last word.

Questions about how a specific number was calculated? See The Ledger for the accuracy record, or read our Corrections Policy if you think something is wrong.