Always the weekend that the competition kicks off, the papers are putting on a special edition about the Jupiler Pro League. In these you can find lot's of information about the teams, like players, staff, ... But I am always interested in the year budgets these teams have!
These should always give a good indication how teams will perform. But each year there are teams who are underperforming and of course on the opposite teams who are overperforming. A tittle can be bought so there is no guarantee that the club with the heighest budget will be crowned Champion!

So, I did try something different. The total market value of the players should give a better/more accurate prediction. This should represent the quality they have in the team. But also here no guarantee. Youngsters are most likely under valued, while the older players sometimes are over valued!

So, let's combine the two and see what the ranking at the end of the season should be!

Ranking based on budget!

Club Brugge has by far the biggest budget of them all. A whopping € 60M. This is already the double of number 4 in the list Standard! On second place we do find Anderlecht. The problem Anderlecht is facing is that due to a bad transfer policy they are left behind with very big salary pay checks for players who are more sitting in the tribune or on the bench then that they really can smell the grass!
Last year champion is only on the 5th place with a budget of only €25 mill. They paycheck which they will get from the UEFA for playing the Champions League is 50% of their budget. So it would be nice to see a budget increase for next year!

At the bottom we do find STVV and Mouscron. Only € 8 mill, which is only 13% of the budget of Club Brugge! I was surprised by the budget that Cercle has for the season. With €15 mill they are placed in the middle of the pack! Probably this has to do with the mother club Monaco pushing something extra to Cercle.

Ranking based on total Market Value of the players

You do expect more or less the same ranking. But there are some interesting differences. I do think that a team would like to be higher in this table than the budget list!

Here the leader of the pack is Genk. A surprise on one side because they already sold players in this transfer window for € 43.20 mill. Surprisingly Anderlecht is also second in this list. But the reason behind this is probably because they do have 39 professional player compared to only 31 for Genk and Club Brugge.

Market value and budget compared!

If we are going to compare the total market value of the team with the budget there are also some interesting facts. Let's assume that the total market value of the squad should be around the double of the budget.
Here we do see that the total market value of the Genk squad is 4 time more than their budget, 4.572 times to more exact! Also Anderlecht (2.244 times), Standard (2.608 times), Charleroi (2.868 times) and surprisingly also STVV with 2.31 times.
At the bottom here we do have KV Mechelen with only 1.117 times and KV Kortrijk with 1.125 times.
Top team Anderlecht and Gent are just below the 2 times mark with respectivly 1.826 and 1.944 times.
This is no indication how well a team will do in a season, but reflects more how good the club is using their budget!

The final verdict!

Based on the following calculations Club Brugge and Anderlecht are the favorites to win the title, Genk is only at the thrid place!
I don't believe that Anderlecht can have a shot at the title. They are building a complete new team with a lot of youngsters. These youngsters will make mistakes which can cost Anderlecht some points, like we did see in the past weekend.
I do think that Genk and Standard will be the contenders for Club Brugge! But the transfer window is still open for another month in Belgium. If Club Brugge did loose Vanaken their chances will drop, the same if Genk will have to let Berge go.
Waasland-Beveren and Mouscron will battle out who will relegate! But STVV also will have a difficult season!

But luckily football isn't sience not mathematics! It depends on a lot of factors and for sure the budget a team has can buy you more luck but it doesn't guarantee a trophy!

Cheers,
Peter