Attack & Defence Ratings Using Goals Scored and Conceded

Every ProSoccer match page displays Attack Power (AP) and Defense Power (DP) ratings for both teams. These metrics answer two fundamental questions: how dangerous is this team going forward? and how solid are they defensively? — both measured relative to the league average.

What Attack Power and Defense Power Measure

Both AP and DP use 1.00 as the league average baseline. A value above 1.00 means the team performs above average in that dimension; below 1.00 means below average. The ratings are computed separately for three contexts: Home, Away, and Overall (combined).

Metrics are currently classified for Goals, Corners, and Yellow Cards. Each metric identifier follows the pattern: LOCATION_METRIC_TYPE — for example, HOME_GOALS_ATTACK_POWER is the goals attack power for a team playing at home. Always use the team's location (home or away) to pick the right metric — both teams have ratings for all three contexts.

Goals Attack Power (AP)

Measures how many goal-scoring chances a team creates compared to the league average.

Goals Defense Power (DP)

Measures how few goals a team concedes compared to the league average. Lower values = better defense.

Corners Attack Power & Defense Power

Corners AP measures how many corners a team wins; Corners DP measures how many they concede — both vs league average.

For Corners DP, lower values are better — a team with DP 0.72 concedes corners rarely relative to the league. For Corners AP, higher values mean the team wins corners more often — a team at 1.45 creates corners very often.

Yellow Cards Ratings

Yellow cards have two separate classifications — one for cards a team receives (Discipline) and one for cards they cause opponents to receive (Aggression).

Real Match Example: Man City vs Crystal Palace

From the fixture on 2026-05-13:

Reading these together: City at home is a formidable attacking and defensive force — their 1.59 AP and 0.58 DP wall combination makes them overwhelming favourites. Palace away brings a slightly below-average attack but a solid defensive structure. The expected goals gap is significant, which feeds directly into the Poisson model generating a high home win probability.

How These Ratings Feed Into Predictions

AP and DP values are combined to estimate expected goals (λ) for each team in a given fixture. The home team's AP is multiplied against the away team's DP (and vice versa), then scaled to the league average — producing the λ values fed into our Poisson distribution to generate all market probabilities (1X2, Over/Under, Correct Score, BTTS).

Ratings are recency-weighted — recent matches carry significantly more weight than older ones, so a team's current form is always reflected accurately rather than being diluted by stale season data.