English football’s data revolution

[Zammo]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9471db52-97bb-11e0-9c37-00144feab49a.html#axzz1Po85YAZm

Very good read if you enjoy the world of football stats.

[Wax Jacket]

You wanted someone with a pass completion rate of 80 per cent, who had played a good number of games. Fleig typed the two criteria into his laptop. Portraits of the handful of men in the Premier League who met them flashed up on a screen. A couple were obvious: Arsenal’s Cesc Fàbregas and Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard.

computer's broken, it said Gerrard

[roadrunner]

You wanted someone with a pass completion rate of 80 per cent, who had played a good number of games. Fleig typed the two criteria into his laptop. Portraits of the handful of men in the Premier League who met them flashed up on a screen. A couple were obvious: Arsenal’s Cesc Fàbregas and Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard.

computer's broken, it said Gerrard

No LOLampard? Can't be right...

[papereyes]

You wanted someone with a pass completion rate of 80 per cent, who had played a good number of games. Fleig typed the two criteria into his laptop. Portraits of the handful of men in the Premier League who met them flashed up on a screen. A couple were obvious: Arsenal’s Cesc Fàbregas and Liverpool’s Steven Gerrard.

computer's broken, it said Gerrard

surely its the less obvious ones that are infinitely more interesting.

[papereyes]

Yet by the mid-2000s, the numbers men in football were becoming uneasily aware that many of the stats they had been trusting for years were useless. In any industry, people use the data they have. The data companies had initially calculated passes, tackles and kilometres per player, and so the clubs had used these numbers to judge players. However, it was becoming clear that these raw stats – which now get beamed up on TV during big games – mean little. Forde remembers the early hunt for meaning in the data on kilometres. “Can we find a correlation between total distance covered and winning? And the answer was invariably no.”

Tackles seemed a poor indicator too. There was the awkward issue of the great Italian defender Paolo Maldini. “He made one tackle every two games,” Forde noted ruefully. Maldini positioned himself so well that he didn’t need to tackle. That rather argued against judging defenders on their number of tackles, the way Ferguson had when he sold Stam. Forde said, “I sat in many meetings at Bolton, and I look back now and think ‘Wow, we hammered the team over something that now we think is not relevant.’” Looking back at the early years of data, Fleig concludes: “We should be looking at something far more important.”

I like this bit and the longer section that follows.

[ZacNaloen]

Reading that, and knowing that Reading obviously adopt some sort of moneyball system.. it seems fairly clear that some of our more unexpected signings are made based on some criteria most of us just haven't got a clue about.

[Tails]

But Harper NEVER tackles.

[Ian Royal]

But Harper NEVER tackles.

Not true. One of the things that convinced me 05/06 was going to be a good season after Plymouth was that Harper made two successful tackles.

[Tails]

Christ.