The Old Firm by Numbers

The longest-running fixture in this vault and the one with the largest number of meetings. It is also the record with the longest competitive imbalance, which makes its era split unusually pronounced.

The largest series

The fixture between the two Glasgow clubs has been played more often in competitive football than any other pairing in this vault, across a domestic league whose structure has changed repeatedly and a national cup that has produced a great many meetings between the two.

The size of the series is a methodological asset. With several hundred meetings the aggregate is insensitive to individual results, the draw rate is well estimated and the era comparisons rest on samples large enough to be read. Very few fixtures in the sport offer that.

The imbalance across eras

One club holds a substantial lead in wins across the whole series, and its dominance is concentrated in specific periods rather than spread evenly. There are decades in which the fixture was almost even and decades in which it was not, and the aggregate is a weighted average of those periods.

The gap between the two clubs in the record is larger than in most classic rivalries, which makes the era split more important rather than less. A reader who looks only at the aggregate will see a dominance that the decade table qualifies substantially, and the qualification is the interesting part.

The structural changes

The competition itself has changed shape repeatedly: the number of clubs, the format of the league, the number of meetings per season and the existence of a second tier. Each change altered how often the fixture could be played, and therefore how fast the record accumulated.

Those changes also produced gaps. Periods in which the two clubs were not in the same division appear in the record as discontinuities, and a table that lists meetings by season rather than by decade will show them plainly. The discontinuities are part of the record and should not be smoothed away.

The cup meetings

National cup meetings form a large secondary class in this series, and they are weighted differently from league meetings because a cup draw can produce repeated meetings in one season through replays. The class is therefore more volatile than the league class even though it is smaller.

A table that separates league from cup meetings shows two different records with different shapes. Combining them produces an aggregate in which the volatile class contributes a disproportionate share of the changes, and the caption should say which classes are included.

Goals and the era

Scoring per meeting in this fixture has fallen substantially from the early decades, as it has across the sport, and the decline is one of the clearer era signals in the record. A comparison of goals per meeting across periods describes the changed nature of the game as much as the changed nature of the rivalry.

The goal totals are also affected by the imbalance. Periods of dominance produce lopsided scorelines, which raise the aggregate for one side and lower it for the other. The distribution of scorelines is therefore more informative than the aggregate, and a frequency table of results is the better presentation.

Reading this record

For a series this long and this imbalanced, the honest presentation is a decade table with league and cup meetings separated, wins and draws reported for each side, and the goal rate per meeting rather than the raw total. The aggregate is a headline for the curious and a trap for the careless.

This vault re-checks the record annually and frames it at a stage of history. The fixture is still played, the league format still changes and the totals still move, so any figure here is a reading rather than a final account.

Key reference points

• It is the most-played competitive fixture in this vault.
• One club holds a substantial lead, concentrated in specific periods.
• The domestic competition has changed format, size and frequency repeatedly.
• Division gaps appear in the record as discontinuities rather than gradual change.
• Cup meetings are more volatile than league meetings because of replays.
• Report by decade with classes separated and the goal rate per meeting.

A series this long is a history of the competition as much as of the two clubs, and the decade table is where that history becomes visible.