Going on our past signings we like players who consistently out perform their xG aswell, Phillips, Kane, DKD, Russell (this season anyway) and Mcatee who are all good ball strikers
I can't help but compare it to trying to work out 'expected snogs' from the days of going out in town as a teenager. There are so many kernels of judgement involved that it makes the whole thing of forcing a stat from it ridiculous. Which then gives me hardly any trust in the football xG version.
I made this point years ago. Firstly, there isn't a never ending supply of Ethan Pinnocks and Marc Roberts playing in non-league. Sam Winnalls and Conor Hourihanes aren't growing on trees, ripe for the plucking in League 2. Once you've signed them, that resource is depleted, so when you sell them you can't replace because there aren't any there to replace them with. Jack Shepherd might be another example, depending on his progress, but that's one player a decade on. The other problem is every other team is studying the same data about the same individuals and many of them have much deeper pockets. It seemed to me our business model and our entire future was based on the notion that what we achieved as early adopters of data driven player identification could be repeated year on year. You only have to watch the final few minutes of Money ball to understand why this would not be the case. We had an advantage for a short period of time, just like the Oakland A's, and I'm very thankful for it, they were great times, but it was never going to last; if you gain an advantage, everyone else copies what you're doing. We now seem to be using a similar approach but in different markets, scouring Ireland and Europe, but the algorithms appear to be misfiring as what we're bringing in isn't of comparable quality.
I've long said this. Effective strategies are generally short lived unless you have infinite resource so can outcompete everyone else. If you're fastest out of the blocks, you have to make it count. We didn't, well, not enough anyway. Once others followed suit with more resource, our strategy unravelled and we lost our competitive advantage and since the first few years, our hit rate hasn't been great at all. We could be lucky and find untapped markets, but the same will follow if we do find them. I feel we're in the realm of hoping our academy finds a diamond or two, or we get lucky with timing where competitors don't need a certain player while we do. The alternative is we find a coach that somehow manages to get more out of the collective than their individual talents allow. I'm not too hopeful about that either.
Another way to look at it is that the Wembley defeat ‘massively’ f****d us. If we’d come out on top, would we have had to sell the players we did? Maybe we’d have got even more cash. The likes of Connell, Cole and Phillips were bang in form, could they have thrived in the Champ like Winnall and Hourihane did for a few months with us? We’d have signed Bobby Thomas too. Recruitment (seemingly up until relegation) definitely found us some massively unearthed diamonds. And even that first year, Phillips, Connell, Thomas, even Norwood for his age were very good finds. So it’s definitely still doable regardless of how many other clubs are fishing in similar ponds with the same rods. The last couple of years, recruitment wise have been appalling. DKD has been the one real success. But he was hardly a diamond in the rough. He was well known and cost the club a fair old whack. Picking up a Mads from Denmark, a Kitching or Pinnock from FGR, or a Connell - on a free - who had been in the Scottish lower leagues, that feels magical business compared to the likes of de Gevigney, Earl, Pines or Nwakali. And I’m not even sure Sormaz has fingerprints on any of those either. So either the data is now failing, or those assessing it are. Or we could blame the head coaches. Or all of the above. I like the use of data. But I really wish they’d start finding lads who can defend better and some who are even fairly fast. It’s like watching walking football these days.
What if the with a limiting pool of players we have available the parameters we use to filter down players are too specific? Especially given we recruit a specialist position in wing backs who have such an important role in our team, even if we were to nail every other spot in the team, if we have a list of wing backs available to us and they all aren't good enough and we aren't willing or able to change the system in a short time the team will struggle?