England's summer rebuilt a club. Spain's summer barely moved a chair. We ran the same model over La Liga that we ran over the Premier League — twenty thousand simulated seasons, every permanent transfer of the window — and the headline is how little has changed.
How the Supercomputer thinks
It begins with last season's final table, because leagues are stubborn: most of a club's points total carries into the following year. Then it adjusts for the window — but never by transfer fee. A fee measures ambition, not quality.
Instead every permanent arrival and departure is valued by what that player actually produced in La Liga last season: minutes on the pitch multiplied by match rating above a replacement-level baseline. A midfielder who played thirty games at 7.2 is a measurable asset moving between two clubs in the same table. A name is not.
The predicted table
| # | Club | Projected | 25/26 | Move | Key probability |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Barcelona | 82 | 94 | — | 61.7% title |
| 2 | Real Madrid | 78 | 86 | — | 33.4% title |
| 3 | Villarreal | 67 | 72 | — | 3.1% title |
| 4 | Atletico Madrid | 64 | 69 | — | 1.5% title |
| 5 | Celta Vigo | 58 | 54 | ▲ 1 | 0.5% drop risk |
| 6 | Real Betis | 57 | 60 | ▼ 1 | 0.7% drop risk |
| 7 | Rayo Vallecano | 50 | 50 | ▲ 1 | 6.4% drop risk |
| 8 | Valencia | 50 | 49 | ▲ 1 | 6.7% drop risk |
| 9 | Getafe | 49 | 51 | ▼ 2 | 8.4% drop risk |
| 10 | Espanyol | 48 | 46 | ▲ 1 | 10.5% drop risk |
| 11 | Real Sociedad | 47 | 46 | ▼ 1 | 12.2% drop risk |
| 12 | Athletic Club | 47 | 45 | — | 12.5% drop risk |
| 13 | Sevilla | 47 | 43 | — | 13.7% drop risk |
| 14 | Alaves | 46 | 43 | — | 15.5% drop risk |
| 15 | Levante | 44 | 42 | ▲ 1 | 21.7% drop risk |
| 16 | Elche | 44 | 43 | ▼ 1 | 23.3% drop risk |
| 17 | Osasuna | 43 | 42 | — | 26.5% drop risk |
| 18 | Deportivo La Coruna | 40 | — | new | 41.4% drop risk |
| 19 | Malaga | 39 | — | new | 47.1% drop risk |
| 20 | Racing Santander | 38 | — | new | 52.7% drop risk |
Barcelona favourites, Madrid within reach
Barcelona take the title in 61.7% of simulated seasons on 82 points, down from last season's 94 as regression pulls every outlier back toward the pack. Real Madrid win it in 33.4%. Between them they take the trophy in over ninety-five per cent of runs — nobody else reaches even four.
The quietest window in Europe
This is the finding that separates Spain from England. In the Premier League one club gained more than twenty-four points of proven output in a single summer. In La Liga the biggest gain belongs to Celta Vigo, at +6.5 — roughly a quarter of it.
The three largest gains: Celta Vigo +6.5 · Deportivo La Coruna +3.6 · Malaga +1.7. The three heaviest losses: Getafe -5.1 · Elche -3.6 · Osasuna -3.6.
Celta Vigo are the only side the model moves meaningfully upward, to 5th, largely on Aleix Febas arriving from Elche. Getafe take the sharpest fall, to 9th, having lost Luis Milla to Como and Juan Iglesias to Sevilla in the same window.
Spain's exports went west
The most striking pattern in the data is not who arrived but where the departures went. Antoine Griezmann left Atletico Madrid for Orlando City, Robert Lewandowski left Barcelona for Chicago Fire, and Brais Méndez left Real Sociedad for Columbus Crew. Three recognisable names, one destination — and none of them replaced from within the division.
Three promoted clubs, three uneasy numbers
Deportivo La Coruña, Málaga and Racing Santander all project into the bottom three, with relegation probabilities between forty and fifty-three per cent. None has a La Liga record to separate it from the others, so the model declines to invent one.
What the Supercomputer cannot see
Worth stating plainly, because a projection that hides its limits is worth less than one that names them. Of 69 permanent arrivals across the division, only 20 came from another La Liga club. The remaining 71% arrived from abroad or the Segunda with no La Liga minutes to measure, so the model cannot value them at all — a wider blind spot than the Premier League's, where the figure was 65%.
It also knows nothing of managers, injuries or fixture runs. A season is not the sum of its transfers. But every number above comes from the record rather than an opinion, and the model says plainly where the record runs out.