How the GPL Power Rankings Work

Rankings use an Elo rating system, the same family of methods originally developed to rate chess players and later adapted for international football teams, tuned to Ghana Premier League results.

Updated 15 Oct 2026, 11:28 GMT Results to matchday 6 Next: matchday 7 (Sat 17 Oct–Sun 18 Oct)

Elo in plain English

Every club has a rating. The average is 1500. Before each match, we compare the two ratings (plus home advantage) to get each side's expected result. After the match, the winner takes rating points from the loser. An unexpected result moves more points than an expected one, and bigger winning margins count for more. A draw moves a few points towards the weaker side.

Our settings

Starting rating

1500 for every club in 2022-23, the first season in our data

K factor

20 (how fast ratings move)

Home advantage

200 rating points (none at a neutral ground)

Winning margin

1 for a margin of 0-1, 1.5 for 2, (11 + margin) / 8 for 3 or more

New season

Every rating moves one third of the way back towards 1500. Promoted clubs start at the average rating of the clubs relegated that season.

Awarded results

Count in the table but do not change ratings.

Home advantage in the Ghana Premier League is unusually strong. Across our data, home sides win about 58% of matches and away sides only about 16%. This is why it is worth 200 points here, well above the figure used for top European leagues.

Match predictions

The rating gap gives each side's expected result. We then estimate the chance of a draw from how often Ghana Premier League matches with a similar rating gap ended level, and split the rest between a home and an away win.

How accurate is it?

We tested the model on 600 matches from 2023–24 and 2024–25, predicting each one using only the results before it (2022–23 was used to warm the ratings up). We chose the settings with the best score.

Log loss

0.965 (lower is better)

Brier score

0.572 (lower is better)

Without ratings

0.969 log loss, using only the league's average home, draw and away rates

The ratings beat the league averages. But the Ghana Premier League is very even, with home advantage often closing any perceived quality gap between sides. Predictions here should be treated as a fun and interesting guide to how the clubs compare, not a forecast of any one match.

The 2025–26 season

For 2025–26 our source gives every score but not the match dates, and Elo needs results in order. So we replayed that season in 500 different random orders and averaged each club's final rating. The order made little difference: each club's rating varied by about 7–10 points across the replays. On the team charts that season is shown as a single dashed step.

The season simulator

We play out every remaining fixture 10,000 times. In each run, every club's rating is first nudged up or down at random, because no rating is exact and form changes during a season. The size of the nudge comes from how much ratings really moved in past seasons (about 45 points over a full season) and shrinks as fewer matches remain. Scorelines are drawn from real Ghana Premier League results, and clubs level on points are separated as the GFA's regulations (Article 8.5) require: head-to-head points, then head-to-head goal difference, goals scored and away goals.

Sources and credits

• 2026–27 results: Ghana Football Association, entered after each matchday.
• 2025–26 results: Wikipedia, 2025–26 Ghana Premier League, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
• 2022–23 to 2024–25 results: API-Football.

Nsoatreman (2024–25) and Hohoe United (2025–26) withdrew during the season. Their matches count towards their opponents' ratings, but they are not shown in our tables.

Updates

The rankings, predictions and chances are updated after every matchday.

How to cite

GPL Power Rankings, ghana-online-betting.com/gpl-power-rankings, updated 15 Oct 2026, 11:28 GMT.

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