How it works
Plain English, no secret sauce. If something looks off, tell us and we will look again.
The briefing
Every morning the briefing is compiled automatically from published reports: the club's real news, up to five stories, readable in about a minute. On a quiet day you get fewer. We never pad.
- Fresh headlines. Each story gets a new headline that says what actually happened, written from the facts. We never copy a headline or an article.
- Credit every time. Each story says who reported it and links to them. If several outlets reported the same story, it appears once and credits each of them.
- Rumours stay rumours. A transfer rumour is always worded as a report and shows a simple status: happened, did not happen or still open.
- Football only. Nothing about anyone's private life, behaviour, disputes or alleged wrongdoing. Injury news only when the club itself has announced it.
The transfer meter
Transfer reports carry a meter out of 5. It uses plain facts about the story only, never anyone's past record:
- How many separate outlets are reporting it (a point each, up to four).
- Whether the club or the BBC has reported it (two points).
- How concrete it is: terms agreed (two), a bid with a fee (one and a half), a bid or talks (one), a loan being looked at (a half), just interest (none).
- Whether it was reported in the last 24 hours (a half).
The points become the meter: 5 from 6 points, 4 from 4.5 points, 3 from 3 points, 2 from 2 points, 1 from 0 points.
- 5: Nailed on
- 4: Got legs
- 3: Maybe, maybe not
- 2: Agent talk
- 1: Pie in the sky
The meter describes the story, not the people reporting it. We do not score, rank or rate journalists, reporters or outlets.
Called it
Before every season, computer models, pundits and fans publish where they think the club will finish. We log each one with credit and a link, recording only the call for this club, and score it against the live table.
- A predicted finishing place is scored by how many places out it is. Zero is perfect.
- A model that gives odds rather than a place (say, an 88% chance of promotion) is shown exactly as published, never turned into a place. At the end of the season it gets a forecast score out of 100 for how much chance it gave to what actually happened (a standard method called a Brier score: 100 means full confidence in exactly what happened, 50 is what a coin toss would get).
Until the final table, everything is still open and shown as it stands.
Spotted a mistake?
Use the contact form and we will look again.