Dear Soccer Fans,
Things are great! Games can be watched almost anytime. Leagues from anywhere in the world are just a few keyboard-taps away. Hours can be filled reading articles, listening to podcasts, and scrolling feeds. And the nerds are spewing out all kinds of complicated stats to nosh on.
It’s a new glorious age. However, for many the options can feel confusing in a kid-in-a-candy-store kind of way. Which games should I watch? Which teams should I follow? Which storylines are the most interesting? Etc.…etc.
So much cool stuff! And so little time! How does one keep up?
Well, maybe try 4-or-More, a guide that is so simple any half-assed slacker can use it.
Here’s how it works.
Just start at the top of a league’s standings (or “table” for some); scroll down the points column looking at the difference between neighboring teams and note any spots where you find differences of four or more. Those spots represent breaks in performance tiers, where the bottom of one group of teams can be separated from the top the next lower group. Each tier is like an airline mileage and seating class.
Try it out.
Take the English Premier League (EPL), England’s topflight men’s league. On May 25th, 2025, the season ended with nine tiers.
Tier | Team(s) | Flight & Mileage Class |
|---|---|---|
Tier 1 | Liverpool (84 points, EPL champions) | First class flier, platinum plus mileage points holder |
Tier 2 | Arsenal (74), Manchester City (71), Chelsea (69), Newcastle (66), Aston Villa (66), and Nottingham Forest (65) | Business class fliers, platinum points holders |
Tier 3 | Brighton & Hove Albion (61) | Premium economy with gold level points |
Tier 4 | Bournemouth (56), Brentford (56), Fulham (54), and Crystal Palace (53) | Premium economy fliers with silver points |
Tier 5 | Everton (48) | Economy plus and basic points |
Tier 6 | West Ham United (43), Manchester United (42), and Wolverhampton Wolves (41) | Economy and basic points |
Tier 7 | Tottenham (38) | Basic economy and probationary points |
Tier 8 | Leicester City (25) and Ipswich Town (22) | Basic economy standby, no points |
Tier 9 | Southampton (12) | Last row standby, no points |
That’s it! It’s that easy.
What does it tell you?
Simply put, 4-or-More takes a snapshot of how closely teams in a league have been performing at a particular moment in a season.
Dude!…NO DUHHH!!
Yes, it is that absurdly simple and that’s the beauty of it. Armed with this handy tool, one can quickly learn a lot about a league and use it in a variety of ways. Think of it like soccer’s version of the Ginsu knife and Moore’s Law all rolled into one! It can slice and dice all the information packed in the standings with a semi-empirically backed performance gauge.
It Conveniently Captures Stories…
The above groupings highlight many of the 2024-25 EPL’s obvious, top season-ending storylines: Liverpool comfortably won the league; the relegated teams Leicester City, Ipswich Town, and Southampton had a tough year; traditional powerhouses Manchester United and Tottenham has dreadfully underperformed; and the race for the remaining spots in next season’s UEFA Champions League, the top European-wide tournament, turned into a game of musical chairs exclusively played by the Tier 2 teams.
But the Tiers also spotlight one the coolest and less-covered stories of the season. Call it “The Rise of the Smartly-run, Lower-Budget, Underdogs,” this story is centered on Tier 3 and 4 teams. These traditional economy fliers exceeded expectations, inspiringly flirted with business class status, and made the season refreshingly competitive.
…and It Helps to Frame Storylines
For example, the rise of Crystal Palace. The season started rough. It looked like Palace may end it near the bottom of the league, in Tier 8 – 9-territory. But eventually the team found its groove and steadily climbed the league’s ladder, finishing in Tier 4. By creating clear-cut levels, 4-or-More enhanced this inspiring ascent. “Can Palace reach the next Tier?” and “How high can it go?” became weekly storylines in 4-or-More world.
This step-by-step rise also set the stage for Palace’s brightest moment: capturing the FA Cup, England’s oldest tournament. It’s the club’s first major tournament win ever and it earned them a spot in next season’s UEFA Europa League, the second level Europe-wide tournament.
How cool is all that?!...and if this middle-aged slacker wasn’t so slack then we could have used 4-or-More to track Palace’s inspiring rise!!😉
But wait…there’s more…
Yes, there is. And in the coming weeks there will be other examples of 4-or-More’s handiness.
Hope you enjoy!
Sincerely,
The Middle-Aged Slacker