How strong are other European Leagues

When Celtic are linked with a player, and in particular a striker, there is a lot of subjectivity about how good they are or how good they have been performing.

Someone not scoring a lot of goals is immediately dismissed but do we take into account the team he is playing for and the opposition he is facing?

On the attached you can see a list of European Leagues ranked by the average ELO rating of the clubs.

Celtic are the top ranked Scottish team in regards to ELO ratings with Rangers 2nd, Hearts 3rd, Hibernian 4th and Motherwell 5th.

Celtic are lower ranked than all 20 teams in the English Premier League and all 18 teams in the Bundesliga. There is only one team in Serie A and one team in La Liga that are ranked lower than Celtic. In fact even in La Liga2 there is a team higher ranked than Celtic.

The English Championship is ranked 7th above and has all 24 teams ranked higher than Motherwell, 20 of the 24 ranked higher than Hearts and 5 ranked higher than Celtic.

It is worth noting that Celtic are ranked 136th in Europe just now but were ranked 61st at the start of the season.

It is interesting to note where the bottom of a league would be ranked in the Scottish Premiership. The bottom (and 18th team) in the Portugese league would be ranked 6th in the Scottish Premiership.

When looking at strikers it is worth noting how many big chances per 90 their team creates. Aleksandar Katai has scored 15 goals in 16 matches for FK Crvena Zvezda in the Serbia League this season which is an amazing return. However it is worth noting that they get 4.3 big chances per 90 which is 13% more than Celtic.

Where as Erik Jirka of Piast Gilwice in Poland only has a paltry 5 goals for the season but his team only create 0.9 chances per 90. If he was playing for FK Crvena Zvezda and in a team who get 378% more big chances per 90 he may well score more. Obviously it's not a simple maths equation but if it was and he was getting 4.3 big chances per 90 that would equate to 23 goals.

It also is worth noting whether or not he helps create big chances or not or if any creative players are injured of have been sold. I'm sure Johnny Kenny would have more goals if Jota was fit or Kuhn was still playing right wing.

Erik Jirka will also be up against tougher opponents than Celtic are with the bottom ranked team in Poland being 6th in the Scottish Premier League rankings and fourteen of their teams ranked higher than Motherwell.

There are other measures you can take into account such as xG, Post Shot xG and shots etc but the point I would just like to make is that the opponents faced is sometimes overlooked.

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