By David 
Felt curious about how Ukraine Premier League stacked up against other leagues this season. Everyone talks about big competitions like English Premier League or La Liga, but what about smaller leagues? Decided to dig into the data myself.
The Spark
Started with a simple question: Is Ukraine’s league REALLY that far behind? Noticed folks online calling it “Europe’s worst.” Needed to see numbers firsthand instead of just opinions.
Getting My Hands Dirty
First step: grabbing the damn data. Opened like 15 tabs—official league websites mostly. Some had clean tables I could copy. Others? Nightmare HTML. Spent half an hour just cleaning up a CSV from the Portuguese league site because the columns were mashed together.
Tools I used:
- Plain old Google Sheets
- Excel (for pivot tables later)
- Random online table extractor when websites fought back
Crunching Numbers
Focused on points per game to keep things fair—some leagues play more matches than others. Created a massive master sheet with:
- Top 5 leagues (England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France)
- Ukraine
- “Tier 2” leagues like Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium
- Wildcards: Austria, Scotland, Denmark
First big oops: Assumed Serie A would be tight at the top like always. Nope. Inter Milan ran away with it early. Adjusted my expectations quick.
Surprises Slapping Me in the Face
Plotting everything made my jaw drop:
- Shakhtar Donetsk’s points-per-game was higher than half the French Ligue 1 table.
- Dynamo Kyiv? Rough start but recovered decently. Their mid-season form matched mid-table Bundesliga teams.
- Biggest shocker: Ukraine’s bottom teams were miles better than Austria’s relegation scrapers.
Tried scatter plots first. Looked like someone spilled beans. Switched to clustered bar charts. Finally saw the patterns:
Key Finds:
- Portugal’s top is INSANE (thanks Sporting + Benfica)
- Ukraine’s middle pack (like Kryvbas) outperforms Dutch/Belgian equivalents
- Only big gap? Comparing relegation battlers. Even then, Ukraine’s worst beat Scotland’s bottom 3 comfortably on metrics.
Wrap-Up Thoughts
Ukraine ain’t no pushover. The narrative about it being “weak” is mostly lazy talk. Top teams compete with Europe’s “lesser giants,” and even strugglers show fight. My takeaway? People underestimate leagues they don’t watch weekly. Also, manually pulling data beats trusting third-tier stats sites. Their numbers were outdated half the time.
Next time? Comparing goal difference trends. Feel like that’ll expose defensive gaps better. But for now—just me, my spreadsheets, and shattered biases.
