What is the magic number to win Scottish Premiership?
What is the magic number to win Scottish Premiership?
Andy Campbell - BBC Scotland Wed, July 29, 2026 at 7:03 PM UTC
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Celtic amassed a record points tally in season 2016-17
Achieving your highest points tally in history and not finishing top of the table.
That's what happened last season in the Scottish Premiership.
Hearts finished with 80 points, a club record. However, it was two points short of Celtic, who made it five Premiership titles in a row by beating the Jambos at Parkhead in the final round of games.
Celtic's final tally of 82 points was some way short of Martin O'Neill's average between the summers of 2000 and 2005 during his first spell in Glasgow.
Back then, he averaged 97.4 points per season and, on two occasions during that spell, finishing with more than 90 points was not enough to make Celtic champions as Alex McLeish's Rangers pipped them on goals scored in 2003 and by a single point in 2005.
So, is there an optimum number for aspiring Premiership champions to aim for that will virtually guarantee success? Let's see what the numbers say...
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Champions tend to finish in the nineties
Twenty of the past 26 Scottish top-flight titles have been won by Celtic, the other six going the way of Rangers.
In the 2000s (starting with season 2000-01, when the top flight moved from 10 to 12 teams and with a split after three rounds of fixtures), the average points tally for the champions has been 91.65.
That includes the incomplete 2019-20 season, which was shortened because of Covid and decided on points average.
There are four outliers. In season 2001-02 (O'Neill's second of his first spell) and 2016-17, champions Celtic exceeded 100 points and Rangers emulated that in season 2020-21.
At the other end of the scale, Celtic won the league in 2013 and finished with 79 points - the only occasion in the 2000s when the champions have finished with fewer than 80 points.
The range of points tallies for champions for the remaining 21 campaigns stands at 80-99.
On 16 occasions, the champions have had more than 90 points, 13 times in the 90s.
Looking specifically at the 2020s, the average points tally of champions has been 93.5.
Therefore, it is likely this season's champions will finish with more than 90 points in the 91-94 range.
Given that champions have registered an average of 3.5 defeats in the 2000s, a team that wins 30, draws four and loses four would be very well placed to win the league.
What about margins?
Of course, as last season proved, breaching 90 is not always necessary and champions' margins have varied substantially.
The average winning margin (points difference between the top two) in the 2000s is 12.12.
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Champions have won the league by as much as 25, 29 and 30 points and as little as one point.
Indeed, the margin has been below 10 points in only 12 of the past 26 campaigns. Most of the time, the margin has been higher. That shows a tendency of a team, mostly Celtic this century, to dominate the league.
Genuine two-way title races in the Premiership number in the minority and a three-way race is even rarer. Only on seven occasions has the winning margin been below five points.
The smallest margin between first and third was last season - 10 points, two fewer than the previous low of 12 in 2018.
What does last season tells us?
As well as O'Neill in season 2026-27, there is another familiar face among last season's top three - but now in a different dugout.
Derek McInnes has moved from runners-up Hearts to Rangers, who finished third last season mostly under Danny Rohl.
O'Neill's higher points average of 2.57 ultimately told in the title race, even though he was in charge for fewer games (23) than McInnes at Hearts (38) and Rohl at Rangers (30).
Rohl, who joined RB Salzburg this summer, actually had an almost identical points average (2.1) to McInnes at Hearts (2.11), but Rangers had got off to such a slow start under Russell Martin that they were always playing catch-up and they faded badly after the split.
Looking at McInnes' spell in charge of Aberdeen, specifically at the period from the start of season 2013-14 to the end of the 2018-19 campaign (i.e. full seasons played to a finish), his highest points tally was 76 and his average for that period was 71.67.
Hence, with Hearts' much publicised data-driven recruitment as well as the players he inherited, McInnes was able to surpass that average by more than eight points, representing an increase of 11.6%.
Rangers' hope is that, with the investment in recruitment on offer at Ibrox, the Scot will be able to go another 15% or so.
Hearts got the better of Rangers in three of last season's four league meetings
The great unknown is Wouter Vrancken, McInnes' replacement at Hearts, who have already been the busiest of last season's top three in the transfer market.
The Belgian has overseen a cumulative total of 331 matches in charge of five clubs in his homeland, with a win percentage of just below 50%.
Looking specifically at last season with Sint-Truiden, he won 53.33% of his games in charge across all competitions.
In the Belgian Pro League, Sint-Truiden picked up 57 points from 30 fixtures in the regular season (1.9 points per game) and 16 points from 10 games in the play-off round (1.6 points per game). Overall, it was a points-per-game average of 1.83.
Much like Hearts' campaign last term - only the Edinburgh team's second runners-up placing in the 2000s - some context is required.
Last season was Sint-Truiden's strongest league showing since finishing as runners-up in 1966. They were ninth as recently as 2022 and 15th out of 18 the year before.
Hence, the Tynecastle club have appointed a head coach with a recent track record of improving the fortunes of an unfancied team, albeit they have already crashed out of Champions League qualifying to Sturm Graz.
Hearts' desire will be for him to show he can get them back on track, and improve the showing of a team after expectations have already been raised.
Source: “AOL Sports”
