Post by eaststand on Dec 24, 2011 17:27:56 GMT 1
I read this a while back and forgot to repost it on here. It's a great read and well worth the time it'll take to read!
One of these two players is the best footballer in the Premier League. Can you guess which one it is? (Clue: It isn't Wayne Rooney)
By MARTIN HARDY
…and if you’re still struggling, the other one is Swansea City’s Mark Gower. Live reports on how the extraordinary – and highly secretive – science of statistics is changing the way Premier League teams buy, sell and pick their squads.
According to football data supplier Opta, Mark Gower (right) has created more goal-scoring opportunities per game (3.46) this season than Lionel Messi, Christiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney (left)
A mid-table Premier League game has just gone into its final five minutes. Only one goal separates the two sides and nerves are frayed. Both dugouts are filled with animated faces – fingers are pointed, tempers lost, a misplaced pass is met with expletives.
Both managers are under pressure but the man in the visiting dugout more so. Even so early in the season he needs a win. His team is leading… just.
The contribution of one player in particular is being questioned, and he is taking flak from his own supporters. He has replaced a big-money signing in recent games and fans’ forums have questioned the decision. Then, with two minutes to go, the visitors score a second. The joy is tangible, the relief huge. The win alleviates the pressure on the manager, but the criticism of the player will continue.
Whatever the fans write, though, the put-upon player will be in the starting line-up the following week and probably for the rest of the season. That’s thanks to the work of a man in a tracksuit in a back office at the club’s training ground who can prove the fans wrong.
Two days after the game I am in his compact office. Three laptops are open on a desk, and the shelves are overflowing with DVDs featuring recent games, player profiles and defensive positionings. On a wall is a screen where video breakdowns can be played to prove a point. This is the heart of video analysis. This is the changing face of English football.
Such is the secretive nature of much of football’s data collection and statistical analysis, the club in question has insisted it cannot be named.
For the clubs looking to find the extra percentages between winning and finishing second, they want to know the distance a player runs at top speed - his so-called high-intensity output
For the clubs looking to find the extra percentages between winning and finishing second, they want to know the distance a player runs at top speed - his so-called high-intensity output
One overworked member of staff is laboriously processing and playing with the numbers that he will then pass on to the coaching staff. I mention the player who has drawn criticism from his own team’s supporters.
‘Watch,’ he tells me. The build-up to Saturday’s second goal flashes onto the screen. By freeze-framing, it is possible to spot his run, slightly off camera.
‘His run creates the goal because it moves a defender out of position. That frees up the space for the shot, which goes in and wins us the game. No one has seen that, but I have, and the coaching staff now have and they are delighted with him. His high-intensity runs (at top speed) are the second best at the club. His figures are excellent.’
‘So he won’t be dropped then?’ I ask.
‘I wouldn’t have thought so!’
Hidden in the stands at every game in the English Premier League are cameras belonging to sports analysts Prozone. These cameras track every element of each player’s movement, distance covered, high-powered runs and defensive positioning.
The overall mileage of players is no longer a key stat for the men looking to find the extra percentages between winning and finishing second.
Now they want to know the distance a player runs at top speed – his so-called high-intensity output. (Arsène Wenger was ahead of the game here – when he began substituting Dennis Bergkamp late in games in 2002, he did so because he was told that the Dutch forward’s sprints were dropping from the 70th minute.)
Clubs are increasingly enlisting the services of these analysts to create profiles of potential transfer targets
Analysts at Premier League clubs are interested in a player’s ability to reach a threshold speed of 22ft per second.
They also want to know the number of chances a player creates, his successful pass percentage in the final third of the field and his recovery rates from sprints. If they can put all this information into one equation, then pub arguments may well be over.
Clubs download data from Prozone the day after a game, in the form of Excel documents or in video format. Prozone provides the video evidence, and football data supplier Opta offers statistical analysis and breakdowns.
Clubs are increasingly enlisting the services of these analysts to create profiles of potential transfer targets.
While I’m here we also scroll through WYScout, a computer program with information on footballers from all over the world. In a matter of clicks the field for an international fullback under the age of 24 and playing in France has been narrowed down to 17 names.
The French market is attractive for English clubs because the wages are not inflated. (The 2009-10 season showed the total wage bill for clubs in France’s top division was less than half that of those in the Premier League.)
In the world of Premier League football, statistics companies now provide ever more complicated analysis of players and games, while each club has its own number crunchers who work alongside managers and club owners to help evaluate players and to provide advice on recruitment.
The extraordinary extent to which Premier League teams buy, sell and pick their players would astonish most fans. But perhaps even more remarkable is that it all started on a faraway baseball diamond in California, with a manager who goes by the unlikely name of Billy Beane – and who is now being played by Brad Pitt in a new Hollywood film.
The madness that is football’s mid-season transfer window kicks off in six weeks’ time.
Twice a year, for a limited period, clubs are given the opportunity to buy and sell players. In the Premier League alone, a staggering £225 million was spent in the 2011 winter window, which opened at the start of the New Year and closed at midnight on January 31.
Every football supporter in the country will have a secret wish list of who they would like to see parading in their team’s kit once all the trading is done.
Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney would doubtless feature highly on any selection of fantasy transfer targets. But the reality is that no amount of money is likely to prise them from their clubs.
So what about a 32-year-old midfielder who is enjoying his first season in the top-flight with Swansea City, having signed on a free transfer from lowly Southend United?
Few outside Wales will have heard of Mark Gower, let alone dreamed that their team might unveil him as the missing piece in the jigsaw.
Thanks to the ever more detailed analysis of English football, though, we can reveal that according to Opta stats, Gower has created more goal-scoring opportunities per game (3.46) this season than Messi, Ronaldo and Rooney. Gower is the sort of player to make the difference between survival in the Premier League and a return to the Championship.
He is also the embodiment of the kind of player promoted by Billy Beane, a former baseball player and now general manager of the Oakland Athletics team. Beane has rewritten the rulebook on player acquisition during his tenure at the unfashionable side.
Through complex equations and extensive number crunching, he was able to unearth hidden statistical truths about baseball that, when put into practice, enabled his poorly funded team to consistently punch above its weight.
The best-selling book written about his methods, Moneyball by Michael Lewis, has been turned into a film that has grossed more than $70 million in the U.S. and is now being touted as this year’s The Social Network. In the film, which opens next week in Britain, Beane is played by Brad Pitt; not bad for a baseball player who, having failed to realise his early potential, retired from the game aged just 27.
Billy Beane has rewritten the rulebook on player acquisition during his tenure at the Oakland Athletics
Billy Beane has rewritten the rulebook on player acquisition during his tenure at the Oakland Athletics
Beane’s genius was in throwing out traditional thinking. He took control of transfer policy from wizened old scouts and entrusted it instead to young college-educated boffins with laptops.
By putting his faith in their new ways of valuing players, he got better value for money and turned cast-offs and misfits into stars. Swansea City’s Mark Gower is what Beane is all about: finding the statistical anomaly and making it work. Gower is what you might call a Moneyball player.
The ideas behind Moneyball have gone on to inspire coaches and club owners in different sports across the world. England’s cricket coach Andy Flower is a fan, and two years ago hired Cambridge University maths graduate Nathan Leamon as performance analyst. But it’s English football that has really taken notice – Beane’s theories have shown the way for clubs to make the most of the money they have, and for smaller clubs with little money to find potential success.
The Holy Grail in English football is to find the magic statistic that defines a player’s true worth.
‘Goal Probability Added’ (GPA) is the stat many experts believe would capture how much each player’s actions over the course of his career increased the chances of his team scoring. Despite the plethora of data now available, the boffins, statisticians and number crunchers have still to come up with it. But they are getting closer.
Farhan Zaidi, an economics graduate who is now the Oakland As’ director of Baseball Operations, points out that the same thing happened in his sport.
‘I think it could happen,’ he says of finding the formula for Goal Probability Added.
‘We now talk about baseball players in ways that we wouldn’t have dreamed of ten or 15 years ago.’
Opta believes the next step should be to provide its information live. Its experts believe the day will come when an assistant manager in the dugout will be armed with an iPad as information from the game they are playing is processed.
No one in English football has embraced the increased use of scientific information as much as Sam Allardyce. And in his eight years in charge at the Reebok Stadium, Allardyce took Bolton to sixth, eighth and seventh place finishes in the Premier League. They also reached the Carling Cup final and qualified for Europe.
No one in English football has embraced the increased use of scientific information as much as Sam Allardyce
No one in English football has embraced the increased use of scientific information as much as Sam Allardyce
Chelsea’s performance director Mike Forde and Manchester City’s head of performance analysis, Gavin Fleig, were once part of Allardyce’s staff at Bolton.
‘I met Billy (Beane) years ago,’ Allardyce says.
‘You can’t argue with what he’s done. We started our process (at Bolton) in 2001 and went to America to meet people to make sure we achieved sustainable success. That’s what it was all about.’
Allardyce, now in charge at West Ham, used data to show that speeds, high-intensity runs and sprint distances were the important metrics in terms of how often they would get possession of the ball.
‘We devised a strategy based on four key performance indicators: technical, tactical, psychological and physical. We broke it down to age brackets. Gary Speed, for example, was a very experienced player moving into the back end of his career (at the time in his mid-thirties).
'However, we knew age wasn’t a concern because the stats he was producing showed he was in the 30 years and below bracket. His injuries were minimal, his game ratio was magnificent and physically and technically he was outstanding. At that price, he was an absolute bargain.’
Speed wasn’t the only ageing player analysed and recruited by Allardyce at Bolton Wanderers. Ivan Campo, Fernando Hierro, Youri Djorkaeff, and Jay Jay Okocha were all signed when the stats showed they were being undervalued by the transfer market. All went on to play influential roles in transforming a small club into challengers – and showing that Moneyball could work in a small corner of Lancashire.
Top clubs like Manchester City and Chelsea have invested millions in their scientific departments. Chelsea’s Forde recently admitted his department has 32 million points of data from which they can build profiles of their own players, opposition players and potential signings.
Meanwhile, at Manchester City, there are four analysts for the senior squad and six for the youth sides. Part of Beane’s insight was to change what people looked for in young players, and Manchester City have commissioned Opta stats from their youth games. There is a growing feeling that physicality in young players may have been given too much importance. This clearly may affect who the very elite in the Premier League now sign.
Understandably, they don’t want to share what they find. Such clubs are also interested in exploring new, untapped markets, so Holland and France have become attractive. Opta has also been requested to produce stats from Eastern Europe and South America.
Football is an increasingly competitive market and the leaders are growing (Opta employs 140 full-time staff and has offices from Italy to America).
An Opta match analyst follows every detail of an England v Brazil match
Beane set out to destroy age-old scouting myths to create a scientific approach to recruitment that debunked sections of scouting theory, and English football clubs are using companies such as Opta and Prozone (as well as, Scout7, WYScout, Sportstec and Amisco) to supply information that should help them do the same. And the level of detail of the information they are now able to provide is remarkable.
As Chelsea’s Fernando Torres gears up for the start of the London derby with Arsenal at a packed and expectant Stamford Bridge, on the tenth floor of a Waterloo office block three men sit in front of screens in a compact office belonging to Opta.
Two of the men will track every single action made during the game by players on each side. The third is effectively there as back-up in case the smallest detail of the game is open to debate. In total, they will track around 2,000 actions in the 90 minutes plus injury time. None will be missed.
Double-clicking with breathtaking speed, they tap the quick keys to register every element of a pulsating encounter. The match action is being stripped to its bare data in order to give football clubs the football equivalent of the telemetry studied by engineers in Formula 1.
Each time a pass is made it will be registered from a list of possibilities – long, short or even a flick (clubs from Serie A asked for this to be added). It all happens at a dizzying pace and by the time Andre Villas-Boas, Chelsea’s manager, has sunk to his knees as Robin Van Persie completes a stunning hat-trick with the fifth goal for the visitors, every single element of the performance of all 28 players will have been logged.
The movements of Brazilian left back Marcelo tracked on a Prozone monitor. The level of detail of the information they are now able to provide is remarkable
Beyond Van Persie’s hat-trick the detail reveals the Arsenal striker has accurately out-passed Torres almost two to one, has had three times as many shots and that his overall performance is closer to what would be expected of a £50 million forward, the astronomical sum Chelsea paid Liverpool for Torres.
The perception that Chelsea’s Brazilian midfielder Ramires is all about flair will also have proved to be another footballing fallacy; his six completed tackles being the third highest total in a Premier League match this season.
Liverpool is one of the highest-profile Premier League club to be using the Moneyball system for player recruitment, which might be a surprise given that £100 million has been spent in the transfer market since their billionaire owner John Henry bought the club earlier this year.
The club signed three new midfielders in the summer for a combined total of £40 million. Stewart Downing, Charlie Adam and Jordan Henderson were among the 12 top midfielders in England last season in terms of creating goal-scoring chances.
While there is no suggestion that Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish was not keen to take on this trio of midfielders, all three had attracted the attention of Damien Comolli, Liverpool’s influential director of football, thanks to their stats.
Comolli is a disciple of Sabermetrics, another specialised analytical system, pioneered by Bill James, who was hired to help the Boston Red Sox baseball team. The system uses stats to measure in-game activity, and relies on hard data, a rigorous process of analysis and a willingness to question previously held assumptions.
Barcelona's Lionel Messi would doutbless feature highly on any selection of fantasy transfer targets
Barcelona's Lionel Messi would doutbless feature highly on any selection of fantasy transfer targets
The system was then adapted by Beane. As a Tottenham fan, Beane then became friends with Comolli during his time at the club, where he was influential in identifying transfer targets who became successes, such as Gareth Bale and Luka Modric.
After Comolli moved to Liverpool, and on the completion of Downing’s £20 million move there from Aston Villa, he introduced a new word to the vernacular of the English Premier League: ‘efficiency’.
‘Maybe his talent is a little bit undervalued in English football,’ Comolli said on completing the transfer, ‘but we know what we are getting: a very, very good, efficient footballer.’
Beane confirms much of Liverpool’s summer outlay was based on stats. Uruguayan Luis Suarez, the club’s star striker who was bought from Ajax for £22 million, is one such example.
‘I know when they acquired him they used key metrics,’ says Beane.
‘I know Damien was looking at key stats and how they translated into the Premier League. It is fun to see his success. As for the other signings, we will see how the season goes.’
Beane, 49, warns there are misconceptions about Moneyball: ‘People assume just because you’re using metrics, that it means you spend very little. I would completely disagree with that. Ultimately you want to get the most value.
'Some great players cost a lot and they’re worth every darn penny. It is a misconception that you’re always looking to go on the cheap. Ultimately we’re all running businesses, we know what happens if you don’t do it correctly. There is not a business today that is not trying to identify what things have the most value.
'If you’re a sports team you’re trying to be as efficient as possible and invest in what really counts.
'Some stats don’t matter, some do. If your team has a lot of money you can get the best of everything, but if you’re a mid-table club, you’re investing in the skill sets that create a correlation to winning. There are key metrics that work.’
Demba Ba, the forward snapped up for nothing by Newcastle United over the summer, is a classic example of a player whose statistics prove his signing to have been good business. The 26-year-old Senegal international was recruited as a replacement for Andy Carroll following the latter’s £35 million transfer to Liverpool. Ba is statistically the most dangerous aerial forward in England. He has scored more headed goals than any player this season.
Newcastle’s chief scout, Graham Carr, also happens to be one of the most respected in the game. He has increasingly looked to France for undervalued players.
‘People will all look at Arsène Wenger and say he’s got the French market covered, but we’ve got a good handle on it, believe me,’ he says.
‘The stats are important, but more important is the human eye,’ agrees Sunderland manager Steve Bruce.
‘You can look at a player from a foreign country that has great stats but you have to see them and you have to ask if they can play in the English Premier League. Sometimes they can’t.
'We were recently sent great figures on a player and we went to watch him. The first time he was tackled he went down and rolled over about 25 times. He would have been wrong for this country. The stats didn’t reveal that.’
One of these two players is the best footballer in the Premier League. Can you guess which one it is? (Clue: It isn't Wayne Rooney)
By MARTIN HARDY
…and if you’re still struggling, the other one is Swansea City’s Mark Gower. Live reports on how the extraordinary – and highly secretive – science of statistics is changing the way Premier League teams buy, sell and pick their squads.
According to football data supplier Opta, Mark Gower (right) has created more goal-scoring opportunities per game (3.46) this season than Lionel Messi, Christiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney (left)
A mid-table Premier League game has just gone into its final five minutes. Only one goal separates the two sides and nerves are frayed. Both dugouts are filled with animated faces – fingers are pointed, tempers lost, a misplaced pass is met with expletives.
Both managers are under pressure but the man in the visiting dugout more so. Even so early in the season he needs a win. His team is leading… just.
The contribution of one player in particular is being questioned, and he is taking flak from his own supporters. He has replaced a big-money signing in recent games and fans’ forums have questioned the decision. Then, with two minutes to go, the visitors score a second. The joy is tangible, the relief huge. The win alleviates the pressure on the manager, but the criticism of the player will continue.
Whatever the fans write, though, the put-upon player will be in the starting line-up the following week and probably for the rest of the season. That’s thanks to the work of a man in a tracksuit in a back office at the club’s training ground who can prove the fans wrong.
Two days after the game I am in his compact office. Three laptops are open on a desk, and the shelves are overflowing with DVDs featuring recent games, player profiles and defensive positionings. On a wall is a screen where video breakdowns can be played to prove a point. This is the heart of video analysis. This is the changing face of English football.
Such is the secretive nature of much of football’s data collection and statistical analysis, the club in question has insisted it cannot be named.
For the clubs looking to find the extra percentages between winning and finishing second, they want to know the distance a player runs at top speed - his so-called high-intensity output
For the clubs looking to find the extra percentages between winning and finishing second, they want to know the distance a player runs at top speed - his so-called high-intensity output
One overworked member of staff is laboriously processing and playing with the numbers that he will then pass on to the coaching staff. I mention the player who has drawn criticism from his own team’s supporters.
‘Watch,’ he tells me. The build-up to Saturday’s second goal flashes onto the screen. By freeze-framing, it is possible to spot his run, slightly off camera.
‘His run creates the goal because it moves a defender out of position. That frees up the space for the shot, which goes in and wins us the game. No one has seen that, but I have, and the coaching staff now have and they are delighted with him. His high-intensity runs (at top speed) are the second best at the club. His figures are excellent.’
‘So he won’t be dropped then?’ I ask.
‘I wouldn’t have thought so!’
Hidden in the stands at every game in the English Premier League are cameras belonging to sports analysts Prozone. These cameras track every element of each player’s movement, distance covered, high-powered runs and defensive positioning.
The overall mileage of players is no longer a key stat for the men looking to find the extra percentages between winning and finishing second.
Now they want to know the distance a player runs at top speed – his so-called high-intensity output. (Arsène Wenger was ahead of the game here – when he began substituting Dennis Bergkamp late in games in 2002, he did so because he was told that the Dutch forward’s sprints were dropping from the 70th minute.)
Clubs are increasingly enlisting the services of these analysts to create profiles of potential transfer targets
Analysts at Premier League clubs are interested in a player’s ability to reach a threshold speed of 22ft per second.
They also want to know the number of chances a player creates, his successful pass percentage in the final third of the field and his recovery rates from sprints. If they can put all this information into one equation, then pub arguments may well be over.
Clubs download data from Prozone the day after a game, in the form of Excel documents or in video format. Prozone provides the video evidence, and football data supplier Opta offers statistical analysis and breakdowns.
Clubs are increasingly enlisting the services of these analysts to create profiles of potential transfer targets.
While I’m here we also scroll through WYScout, a computer program with information on footballers from all over the world. In a matter of clicks the field for an international fullback under the age of 24 and playing in France has been narrowed down to 17 names.
The French market is attractive for English clubs because the wages are not inflated. (The 2009-10 season showed the total wage bill for clubs in France’s top division was less than half that of those in the Premier League.)
In the world of Premier League football, statistics companies now provide ever more complicated analysis of players and games, while each club has its own number crunchers who work alongside managers and club owners to help evaluate players and to provide advice on recruitment.
The extraordinary extent to which Premier League teams buy, sell and pick their players would astonish most fans. But perhaps even more remarkable is that it all started on a faraway baseball diamond in California, with a manager who goes by the unlikely name of Billy Beane – and who is now being played by Brad Pitt in a new Hollywood film.
The madness that is football’s mid-season transfer window kicks off in six weeks’ time.
Twice a year, for a limited period, clubs are given the opportunity to buy and sell players. In the Premier League alone, a staggering £225 million was spent in the 2011 winter window, which opened at the start of the New Year and closed at midnight on January 31.
Every football supporter in the country will have a secret wish list of who they would like to see parading in their team’s kit once all the trading is done.
Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney would doubtless feature highly on any selection of fantasy transfer targets. But the reality is that no amount of money is likely to prise them from their clubs.
So what about a 32-year-old midfielder who is enjoying his first season in the top-flight with Swansea City, having signed on a free transfer from lowly Southend United?
Few outside Wales will have heard of Mark Gower, let alone dreamed that their team might unveil him as the missing piece in the jigsaw.
Thanks to the ever more detailed analysis of English football, though, we can reveal that according to Opta stats, Gower has created more goal-scoring opportunities per game (3.46) this season than Messi, Ronaldo and Rooney. Gower is the sort of player to make the difference between survival in the Premier League and a return to the Championship.
He is also the embodiment of the kind of player promoted by Billy Beane, a former baseball player and now general manager of the Oakland Athletics team. Beane has rewritten the rulebook on player acquisition during his tenure at the unfashionable side.
Through complex equations and extensive number crunching, he was able to unearth hidden statistical truths about baseball that, when put into practice, enabled his poorly funded team to consistently punch above its weight.
The best-selling book written about his methods, Moneyball by Michael Lewis, has been turned into a film that has grossed more than $70 million in the U.S. and is now being touted as this year’s The Social Network. In the film, which opens next week in Britain, Beane is played by Brad Pitt; not bad for a baseball player who, having failed to realise his early potential, retired from the game aged just 27.
Billy Beane has rewritten the rulebook on player acquisition during his tenure at the Oakland Athletics
Billy Beane has rewritten the rulebook on player acquisition during his tenure at the Oakland Athletics
Beane’s genius was in throwing out traditional thinking. He took control of transfer policy from wizened old scouts and entrusted it instead to young college-educated boffins with laptops.
By putting his faith in their new ways of valuing players, he got better value for money and turned cast-offs and misfits into stars. Swansea City’s Mark Gower is what Beane is all about: finding the statistical anomaly and making it work. Gower is what you might call a Moneyball player.
The ideas behind Moneyball have gone on to inspire coaches and club owners in different sports across the world. England’s cricket coach Andy Flower is a fan, and two years ago hired Cambridge University maths graduate Nathan Leamon as performance analyst. But it’s English football that has really taken notice – Beane’s theories have shown the way for clubs to make the most of the money they have, and for smaller clubs with little money to find potential success.
The Holy Grail in English football is to find the magic statistic that defines a player’s true worth.
‘Goal Probability Added’ (GPA) is the stat many experts believe would capture how much each player’s actions over the course of his career increased the chances of his team scoring. Despite the plethora of data now available, the boffins, statisticians and number crunchers have still to come up with it. But they are getting closer.
Farhan Zaidi, an economics graduate who is now the Oakland As’ director of Baseball Operations, points out that the same thing happened in his sport.
‘I think it could happen,’ he says of finding the formula for Goal Probability Added.
‘We now talk about baseball players in ways that we wouldn’t have dreamed of ten or 15 years ago.’
Opta believes the next step should be to provide its information live. Its experts believe the day will come when an assistant manager in the dugout will be armed with an iPad as information from the game they are playing is processed.
No one in English football has embraced the increased use of scientific information as much as Sam Allardyce. And in his eight years in charge at the Reebok Stadium, Allardyce took Bolton to sixth, eighth and seventh place finishes in the Premier League. They also reached the Carling Cup final and qualified for Europe.
No one in English football has embraced the increased use of scientific information as much as Sam Allardyce
No one in English football has embraced the increased use of scientific information as much as Sam Allardyce
Chelsea’s performance director Mike Forde and Manchester City’s head of performance analysis, Gavin Fleig, were once part of Allardyce’s staff at Bolton.
‘I met Billy (Beane) years ago,’ Allardyce says.
‘You can’t argue with what he’s done. We started our process (at Bolton) in 2001 and went to America to meet people to make sure we achieved sustainable success. That’s what it was all about.’
Allardyce, now in charge at West Ham, used data to show that speeds, high-intensity runs and sprint distances were the important metrics in terms of how often they would get possession of the ball.
‘We devised a strategy based on four key performance indicators: technical, tactical, psychological and physical. We broke it down to age brackets. Gary Speed, for example, was a very experienced player moving into the back end of his career (at the time in his mid-thirties).
'However, we knew age wasn’t a concern because the stats he was producing showed he was in the 30 years and below bracket. His injuries were minimal, his game ratio was magnificent and physically and technically he was outstanding. At that price, he was an absolute bargain.’
Speed wasn’t the only ageing player analysed and recruited by Allardyce at Bolton Wanderers. Ivan Campo, Fernando Hierro, Youri Djorkaeff, and Jay Jay Okocha were all signed when the stats showed they were being undervalued by the transfer market. All went on to play influential roles in transforming a small club into challengers – and showing that Moneyball could work in a small corner of Lancashire.
Top clubs like Manchester City and Chelsea have invested millions in their scientific departments. Chelsea’s Forde recently admitted his department has 32 million points of data from which they can build profiles of their own players, opposition players and potential signings.
Meanwhile, at Manchester City, there are four analysts for the senior squad and six for the youth sides. Part of Beane’s insight was to change what people looked for in young players, and Manchester City have commissioned Opta stats from their youth games. There is a growing feeling that physicality in young players may have been given too much importance. This clearly may affect who the very elite in the Premier League now sign.
Understandably, they don’t want to share what they find. Such clubs are also interested in exploring new, untapped markets, so Holland and France have become attractive. Opta has also been requested to produce stats from Eastern Europe and South America.
Football is an increasingly competitive market and the leaders are growing (Opta employs 140 full-time staff and has offices from Italy to America).
An Opta match analyst follows every detail of an England v Brazil match
Beane set out to destroy age-old scouting myths to create a scientific approach to recruitment that debunked sections of scouting theory, and English football clubs are using companies such as Opta and Prozone (as well as, Scout7, WYScout, Sportstec and Amisco) to supply information that should help them do the same. And the level of detail of the information they are now able to provide is remarkable.
As Chelsea’s Fernando Torres gears up for the start of the London derby with Arsenal at a packed and expectant Stamford Bridge, on the tenth floor of a Waterloo office block three men sit in front of screens in a compact office belonging to Opta.
Two of the men will track every single action made during the game by players on each side. The third is effectively there as back-up in case the smallest detail of the game is open to debate. In total, they will track around 2,000 actions in the 90 minutes plus injury time. None will be missed.
Double-clicking with breathtaking speed, they tap the quick keys to register every element of a pulsating encounter. The match action is being stripped to its bare data in order to give football clubs the football equivalent of the telemetry studied by engineers in Formula 1.
Each time a pass is made it will be registered from a list of possibilities – long, short or even a flick (clubs from Serie A asked for this to be added). It all happens at a dizzying pace and by the time Andre Villas-Boas, Chelsea’s manager, has sunk to his knees as Robin Van Persie completes a stunning hat-trick with the fifth goal for the visitors, every single element of the performance of all 28 players will have been logged.
The movements of Brazilian left back Marcelo tracked on a Prozone monitor. The level of detail of the information they are now able to provide is remarkable
Beyond Van Persie’s hat-trick the detail reveals the Arsenal striker has accurately out-passed Torres almost two to one, has had three times as many shots and that his overall performance is closer to what would be expected of a £50 million forward, the astronomical sum Chelsea paid Liverpool for Torres.
The perception that Chelsea’s Brazilian midfielder Ramires is all about flair will also have proved to be another footballing fallacy; his six completed tackles being the third highest total in a Premier League match this season.
Liverpool is one of the highest-profile Premier League club to be using the Moneyball system for player recruitment, which might be a surprise given that £100 million has been spent in the transfer market since their billionaire owner John Henry bought the club earlier this year.
The club signed three new midfielders in the summer for a combined total of £40 million. Stewart Downing, Charlie Adam and Jordan Henderson were among the 12 top midfielders in England last season in terms of creating goal-scoring chances.
While there is no suggestion that Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish was not keen to take on this trio of midfielders, all three had attracted the attention of Damien Comolli, Liverpool’s influential director of football, thanks to their stats.
Comolli is a disciple of Sabermetrics, another specialised analytical system, pioneered by Bill James, who was hired to help the Boston Red Sox baseball team. The system uses stats to measure in-game activity, and relies on hard data, a rigorous process of analysis and a willingness to question previously held assumptions.
Barcelona's Lionel Messi would doutbless feature highly on any selection of fantasy transfer targets
Barcelona's Lionel Messi would doutbless feature highly on any selection of fantasy transfer targets
The system was then adapted by Beane. As a Tottenham fan, Beane then became friends with Comolli during his time at the club, where he was influential in identifying transfer targets who became successes, such as Gareth Bale and Luka Modric.
After Comolli moved to Liverpool, and on the completion of Downing’s £20 million move there from Aston Villa, he introduced a new word to the vernacular of the English Premier League: ‘efficiency’.
‘Maybe his talent is a little bit undervalued in English football,’ Comolli said on completing the transfer, ‘but we know what we are getting: a very, very good, efficient footballer.’
Beane confirms much of Liverpool’s summer outlay was based on stats. Uruguayan Luis Suarez, the club’s star striker who was bought from Ajax for £22 million, is one such example.
‘I know when they acquired him they used key metrics,’ says Beane.
‘I know Damien was looking at key stats and how they translated into the Premier League. It is fun to see his success. As for the other signings, we will see how the season goes.’
Beane, 49, warns there are misconceptions about Moneyball: ‘People assume just because you’re using metrics, that it means you spend very little. I would completely disagree with that. Ultimately you want to get the most value.
'Some great players cost a lot and they’re worth every darn penny. It is a misconception that you’re always looking to go on the cheap. Ultimately we’re all running businesses, we know what happens if you don’t do it correctly. There is not a business today that is not trying to identify what things have the most value.
'If you’re a sports team you’re trying to be as efficient as possible and invest in what really counts.
'Some stats don’t matter, some do. If your team has a lot of money you can get the best of everything, but if you’re a mid-table club, you’re investing in the skill sets that create a correlation to winning. There are key metrics that work.’
Demba Ba, the forward snapped up for nothing by Newcastle United over the summer, is a classic example of a player whose statistics prove his signing to have been good business. The 26-year-old Senegal international was recruited as a replacement for Andy Carroll following the latter’s £35 million transfer to Liverpool. Ba is statistically the most dangerous aerial forward in England. He has scored more headed goals than any player this season.
Newcastle’s chief scout, Graham Carr, also happens to be one of the most respected in the game. He has increasingly looked to France for undervalued players.
‘People will all look at Arsène Wenger and say he’s got the French market covered, but we’ve got a good handle on it, believe me,’ he says.
‘The stats are important, but more important is the human eye,’ agrees Sunderland manager Steve Bruce.
‘You can look at a player from a foreign country that has great stats but you have to see them and you have to ask if they can play in the English Premier League. Sometimes they can’t.
'We were recently sent great figures on a player and we went to watch him. The first time he was tackled he went down and rolled over about 25 times. He would have been wrong for this country. The stats didn’t reveal that.’
