Everything published here in one place. The guides are written to be read in any order, but they are grouped below in the sequence a season actually follows: what is arranged before a ball is kicked, what happens while a match is in progress, and what survives of it afterwards.
Before the match
- How Football Fixture Lists Are Built — the constraint problem behind every published calendar, and why long away runs are usually deliberate.
- The Shape of a Football Season — autumn-to-spring against spring-to-autumn, breaks, congestion and the run-in.
- How Football League Competitions Are Structured — round-robins, groups, points systems, promotion and relegation, and tie-breaking.
During the match
- How Live Football Scores Are Produced — the chain from an observer at the ground to a number on a screen, and why it is provisional.
- Multi-Match Views — following several matches at once without losing the thread.
After the match
- How to Read a Football Result — full time, half time, aggregates, extra time and shootouts.
- Match Statistics and What They Actually Measure — possession, shots, corners, cards and expected goals, with the caveats attached.
- How Football News Travels — source types, dating a story, and reading transfer coverage critically.
Regional
- Following Football in Nigeria — time zones, overlapping seasonal calendars, distance, and following on a data budget.
Basketball
- Basketball Scores and Statistics — why abundance changes the mathematics.
- How to Read a Basketball Box Score — every column, and what it will not tell you.
- How Basketball Competitions Are Structured — series against brackets, and why they measure different things.
Embeds and feeds
- Free Football Score Widgets, Explained — what an embeddable score widget is and what to check before using one.
- Free Basketball Score Widgets, Explained — the same question where the events arrive forty times faster.
About
- About the Matchday Almanac — what this site is, and what it is not.
- Privacy — what this site does and does not collect.
Suggested paths through the material
Three routes, depending on why you arrived.
If you want to understand the number on your screen. Read how live football scores are produced first, then how to read a football result. Between them they cover the entire journey from an event on grass to a permanent record, including every stage at which the number can change. Finish with multi-match views if you follow several games at once.
If you want to argue about statistics. Start with what match statistics measure, which is the most argumentative page here, then read the basketball box score as a contrast. Football's statistical limitations are much clearer once you have seen a sport with enough events to measure properly.
If you are building or running a site. The two widget guides — football and basketball — cover the practical questions about embeds, latency tiers and what an embedded page can do to the page containing it. Then read the live scoring chain to understand what you would be displaying.
How this material is maintained
These are reference pages, not posts. They carry no publication dates because they are not intended to be read as news, and they are revised in place when a definition changes or an explanation turns out to be unclear. Where a competition amends a rule that a page describes, the page changes; where a change would alter a reader's conclusion, that is stated on the page rather than applied silently. The editorial position behind that approach is set out in about this site.
This library is the whole of the site. There is no live score service here, no odds and no betting advice — for live numbers, use a dedicated service or a broadcaster such as the BBC's football section.