Issue 4 - The Calibration Issue

January now behind us thankfully, it is time to look ahead to February and beyond. Firstly, apologies for going dark last week - you can blame the Matchday 8 drama of the Champions League for that.

The reason I am throwing Europe’s premier club competition under the bus is because of further coefficient changes due to performance in that and the Europa League the following day and with further points being won in the hunt for an additional Champions League place, it has also meant all manner of changes when it comes to The Goal Markets.

All Change Please

For those who are late to the party, I did reference previously that changes in co-efficient ranking points could have a direct change on the currency conversion rates and now the league phases of each of Europe’s three club competitions have concluded, I can now highlight precisely what this means.

For starters, we need to look at the currency conversion rates before Matchday 7 of this season’s Champions League began just a couple of weeks ago:

That’s how it was, these are the current rates as of February 3rd, 2025:

Good news if you are trading in Eredivisie goals (Troy Parrott perhaps), very bad news if you are looking to trade anywhere else and this is due to the strength of English teams in Europe recently.

The better the Premier League representatives do in relation to their European counterparts, the weaker the exchange rates on the other side of the English Channel and beyond.

Of course, it is also league goals scored that help feed into the alchemy and results such as Nottingham Forest 7-0 Brighton and Manchester City 5-1 Arsenal are only going to strengthen Premier League sterling further.

Less For Your Money

If we run the numbers from the back end to January to now, this is how much value has been lost across European goals:

Liga Portugal being hit with the biggest dip in exchange rate - something that may make any move for Viktor Gyokeres slightly more realistic in terms of output away from Sporting and there is still scope for this value to decline throughout the rest of the season.

Also not particularly good news for Harry Kane investors at Bayern Munich after the Bundesliga was down 0.074 against the Premier League - although the likelihood of him moving in the summer is unlikely. Then again, it may also lessen the target for Omar Marmoush after his move to Manchester City.

The Top 20

Now that we know the updated exchange rates, what does that mean for the Top 20 strikers in Europe’s top five leagues?

Harry Kane may be among the goals in the Bundesliga but the 19 goals he has scored this season now equate to just 14.39 Premier League goals for the season so far - for every goal scored in Germany, it is worth just over 75% of that in England.

A benchmark that does not sound too unrealistic and although the former Tottenham man would be joint-second in the charts in terms of total goals scored before any currency conversion, he has to make do with fifth after the exchange is made.

As in issue 3 we can see there is Premier League dominance in terms of the top of the charts. This could suggest one of two things:

1) The Premier League has very good strikers#

2) The exchange rate is too high but that can be counterbalanced by arguing would any of those names in the top seven move from the Premier League in the short to mid-term future?

Another interesting name on the list is Mateo Retegui who has scored 16 goals in Serie A and leads the Italian scoring charts at the time of writing. However, when those 16 are put through the currency converter, they are only worth 11.92.

Similar to the Bundesliga, a Serie A goal is worth about 75% of an effort scored in the Premier League and if the Italian forward was to make a move to England, then the current expectation would be 12 goals for his new employer.

Coming Up

I addressed the roadmap in the previous issue, so that there is a bit of framework and direction to the content. I think the move of Marcus Rashford to Aston Villa is an interesting one and also begs the question:

What happens in an intra-league move such as this?

The answer at the moment is that I have no idea but I would be keen to build something to see what should be able to expect of Villa’s new loan capture.

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.

Thanks

Dan