Baltic Power Rankings after GW13: Liepāja rise while Paide’s slump continues

With game week (GW) 13 concluding in Lithuanian A Lyga, the latest calculations of the Baltic Football Power Rankings are in!

As this was the week when Liepāja pulled off a surprise win over RFS (first one in 4 years!), let’s start in Latvia. With this one win over the reigning Champions, the flagship Kurzeme club reversed their recent decline which saw them drop from 9th to 11th place between GWs 10 to 12 and have catapulted themselves back to the 8th position, which is where they started the season. For RFS, this loss cost them 22 coefficient points, reducing their lead over Riga FC to a mere 56 coefficient points. Considering that the biggest gap between the two clubs was 151 coefficient points in after GW4, this should be cause for concern for last season’s Europa League participants.

Elsewhere in Latvia, Jelgava continue to go from strength to strength, having broken into the Top 20 after starting the season all the way down in the 26th position! During this week, Jelgava pulled off a convincing 3-1 win over FK Auda, which also cost Auda 17 coefficient points, severely damaging their chances of catching up to Kauno Žalgiris, who are flying at the top of A Lyga at the moment and are successfully pressing Levadia, who are struggling in their domestic league and are only 15 coefficient points ahead of them, in the 5th place.

Things are not looking too great for Estonia at the bottom of the Baltic Power Rankings, with 3 out of 4 ‘sub-500 coefficient’ clubs coming from Premium liiga. Even Lithuanian DFK Dainava, who remain the only club in the Baltics yet to win a single match this season, managed to float up from the bottom spot up to 28th on the back of their impressive draw against a thoroughly unimpressive FK Žalgiris. That being said, the bottom 3 clubs are only 4 coefficient points apart, so it’s really splitting hairs when it comes to determining which of them is the weakest.

Coming week should see a fierce fight for the 7th to 10th position between FK Panevėžys, FK Liepāja and Paide, who are only 6 coefficient points apart and all in volatile form. Paide, however, are having a particularly rotten time, having been in consistent decline since GW7. A bit further down the table, positions 15-17th are another hot spot, presently contested by ascendant Narva Trans, Tukums 2000 and Grobiņa with only 5 coefficient points separating the three. While Narva Trans have been strong, both Tukums and Grobiņa are also picking up steam.