Introduction
For this week’s challenge, we’re looking at data from the English Premier League (EPL) again ( this may well be a theme for me this year 🙂 ).
The main focus for this challenge is ranking; specifically ranking based on multiple measures. In the EPL, as I’m sure there are with other sports, teams are ranked in the league based on the points accumulated within a season. But sometimes, teams have the same number of points, so further factors are considered. In the EPL, first goal difference is considered, then number of goals scored. If still a tie, then it is based on the total goals scored in the head-to-head between the teams that are tying, and if that doesn’t yield a result, then they look at the total number of away goals scored in the head to head. If it’s all still square at this point, then a play-off (an extra match) between the teams affected would be required. This may all sound a bit extreme – why can’t the teams just be ranked the same? Ultimately, it’s financial related – the position in the league affects whether the top teams qualify for the various European championships in the following season (for which places are limited per country, and participation provides huge financial benefits) and bottom teams get relegated out of the EPL for the following season (so lose the financial benefits of being in the EPL).
In the history of the EPL, there has only actually ever been one season where the EPL Championship had to be decided on goal difference; in season 2011/2012 Manchester City pipped Manchester Utd to the post and so won their 1st Premier League title by scoring 8 more goals than Utd. There have been numerous occasions when Goal Difference has had to decide who gets relegated though. Additionally considering Goals For has had to be used in some seasons to determine some of the mid table rankings.
As before, I have split this challenge into 3 levels depending how far you want to push the visual display.
Requirements
Level 1 / Beginner
- Dashboard 1000 x 1000
- Build a tabular display depicting Team by Season, where each cell is coloured if the team is in the EPL for that season.
- Determine the team’s ranking for the season based on the following criteria, in order of preference
- 1 – the total number of points accumulated, taking into account that some teams have had points deducted during the season for various reasons
- 2 – goal difference
- 3 – goals scored
- Hint – this forums post should give you a clue as to how to approach this
- Label the cell for the team that finished 1st in the season
- Include the finishing position and the points accumulated on the tooltip.
- for those teams which had points deducted, add an additional note to advise of this and provide the reason (eg Middlesborough in season 1996-97)
- Match formatting
- Use your own colours or apply the ones used
- background – pale purple #f1eff6
- squares – mid purple #938bc1
- font dark purple #3d1053
Level 2 / Intermediate
- As above but additionally
- Colour and label the cells based on whether the team was the champion ( C – #ffda66) , was relegated ( R – #e15759) or remained in the league (#938bc1)
- except for the 1994-1995 season, a team is relegated if it ends up in the bottom 3. In the 1994-95 season, the bottom 4 teams were relegated. This was when the number of teams in the EPL was reduced from 22 teams to 20. To manage this for the 1994-1995 season, 4 teams were relegated and only 2 teams promoted from the league below (usually it is 3 down and 3 up)
Level 3 / Advanced
- As above, but additionally
- Colour the cells for those teams that remained in the league (ie wasn’t the champion, and wasn’t relegated), by their rank, with the darker colour representing a lower finishing position.
- I used the following colour palette from Color Brewer to help with this (https://colorbrewer2.org/)
- BuPu 3 Color Seq Palette
<color-palette name=”BuPu 3 Color Seq Palette” type=”ordered-sequential”>
<color>#E0ECF4</color>
<color>#9EBCDA</color>
<color>#8856A7</color>
</color-palette> - you will need to add this to your preferences.tps file as described here
Dataset
The data was originally sourced from Kaggle.com but is available here
Attribute
When you publish your solution on Tableau Public make sure to take the time and include a link to the original inspiration. Also include the hashtag #WOW2025 in your description to make it searchable!
Share
After you finish your workout, share on Twitter and/or LinkedIn using the hashtag #WOW2025 #Tableau and tag @WorkoutWednsday
Solution
Interactive
