State of the Race Update

Our periodic dive into the world of if's, but's, and scenario analysis

I referenced on last week’s Huddle Breakdown podcast with Alan and Laura that I thought the league race was basically over. While not necessarily a bold call or hot take given the current points gap, and the results Celtic have been enjoying, it was the type of things I am not prone to do given my risk-obsessed and worrywart bias. As a result, I wanted to flush things out more and do some simple scenario analysis for context.

Through 15 league games, the table has Celtic on 43 points with a game in hand over Aberdeen at 34 points, and Rangers also with 15 games at 32 points. Because this is a scenario analysis exercise, let us begin with a REALLY bad case scenario to stress test. Let us assume that Rangers win all three of the remaining league derbies.

Now, given recent history and the relative performance levels of the teams so far this season, that would seem a very unlikely scenario, but with two of the three games at Ibrox, it would not be a world-shocking-level outcome.

To frame this stress testing exercise, this graphic provides some simple rates of points accumulation for league seasons since Ronny Deila’s first campaign in 2014-2015. I hope this provides some sense of context. Now, how those points were accumulated differed relative to underlying performance levels, luck, etc. But for the purposes of this exercise, let us keep things simple.