Issue 2 - Market Fluctuation

After last week’s launch of The Goal Markets newsletter, it is now time for what they call in the music industry “the difficult second album”.

Why difficult? Well in fairness it is not difficult as such, more a case of where to take the concept through the many different directions it can travel and whereas last week explained the ins and outs of it all, this issue will highlight what has happened since the launch.

To recap those who may not have read the opening issue, here is what the exchange rate looked like when trying to convert Premier League goals to other leagues across the continent:

The Premier League serving as the gold standard, each of the other major European leagues having some form of exchange rate attached to it in a bid to work out the value of forwards on the continent.

Now without giving away the secret sauce - if only because we do not want ‘The Goal Marketz’ newsletter starting up next week, the exchange rates have fluctuated since the start of the week just as they would at any bureau de change.

With that in mind, we can also look at what the exchange rates look like as of January 21st 2025:

As you can see there have been some movements in the markets and to save you from scrolling from one image to the next, I will put this in a summary table below:

The Premier League Holds Strong

Here we can see the value of the Premier League has held strong while other leagues have at best stayed the same or decreased - in essence you are getting less Eurogoals for your Pounds after the weekend.

But what does this really mean? Is Victor Gyokeres really worth 0.763 Premier League goals when he nets for Sporting in Liga Portugal or is their too much weight being applied to this.

The answer may well lie in the second major component of how the currencies are calcualted and that is thanks to this season’s UEFA co-efficient and with European fixtures taking place this midweek, we could soon see a wild calibration of these rates.

With the co-efficient being a fluid concept throughout the season, it will also reward those nations that have more European representatives in its knockout rounds and if the Premier League rules the roost, this could severly devalue all the other leagues.

Then again, could this be a case of life truly imitating art. How strong is the Premier League against its European counterparts? Is it too strong when compared to other European leagues?

It is these questions and a lot more that we will look to answer in time but that should be enough of the methodology as to how it all works as in the next issue we will look to get into the nuts and bolts of it all.

This is where Viktor Gyokeres will truly come under the spotlight and if he is to move to a club like Manchester United, we can have a stab at how many goals he would be expected to score at Old Trafford next season and not from an xG perspective.

The Top 20

Before I close out this issue, we shall take a recap of the top 20 scorers across the T5 leagues and see what the current exchange rates really mean:

The most interesting thing to take from this is that when you re-order the top 20 after being exchanged, six of the top seven are Premier League forwards with only Harry Kane’s current output at Bayern Munich being able to break the stranglehold.

Does this mean there are more talisman in England who carry a heavier load? What would it look like if we used Bundesliga goals (or any other) as the gold standard? Another couple of questions that will be answered in due course.

The Admin Bit

This concept is far from the finished article and this is where your feedback comes in very handy.

Any suggestions to the modelling or players you want to see put through the currency converter, please let me know in the comments or by emailing me at:

[email protected]

Also, if this has grabbed your interest enough to tell a friend or two about the concept - word of mouth is much better than me putting even more money in Elon Musk’s pocket.

Until Issue 3 (should be with you on Thursday 23rd/Friday 24th)

Thanks
Dan