Giddings said in Comms Aston villa were going to sign him if they didn't go up. Makes me wonder how widely spread our spreadsheet actually is...
Point I'm making is... We ain't building data we're buying it and that means we're always second to the plate.
No football club is building their own database of footballers by analysing matches themselves. Far too expensive - there's a decent industry building around collecting data on footballers, and it involves an awful lot of people sitting watching videos of matches and counting very mundane things, such as pass completion rates, distance run etc. Those companies make money from selling data to football clubs. Like everyone else, BFC are buying this data and building their models from it. What's different is the way that we might interpret those stats, vs how Aston Villa or anyone else might.
One of our data analysts left to join Villa in the summer so possibly he was the one who identified Anderson
That's some team incentive isn't it? 'Make sure you lads get us into the prem, or we'll make you play with Mads Anderson'
It's pretty common pal. Clubs will share data, I'm assuming at a cost. Probably works out alot cheaper than sending your own scouts across the water to watch the player. We were all led on to believe that our data gathering was the dogs ********, and it was.... 5 years ago. Unfortunately we've become the dogs arse of the data game as other clubs have copied, modified and bettered the way we do things.
There may be some truth in this as didn't one of our recruitment staff leave and go to Villa? Ben Hackney? If he's been on the spreadsheet a while he could have taken the name with him. Edit: Sorry, just seen Django's comment above.....
This Add onto that as more clubs join the process and have more cash it will push us down the pecking order just like normal transfers.
... and this is exactly why we’re doomed to fail unless we change the plan. Already seen the failure with the “high press”. Once we were one if the only teams doing it. It worked. However, now every club seems to be doing it. If every club adopts the same system, inevitably it will boil down to which clubs have the best players to do it. Sadly, that is not us. You’d think people who have built careers using stats, probability etc., would have recognised that by now. The plan is already out of date.
Let’s go back to moneyball. Great it worked in America but it was based on a division and finding the outliers I.e. players playing well and undervalued in smaller teams. Moneyball can’t work in football as you cant count the competitive balance in one league compared to another. Ie. The Austrian premier league compared to the championship. I would imagine most l2 teams would compete against them. Yet our model looks at stats of players but not the quality of the league they play in.
Would have thought it will factor in the leagues, these things often use a weighting system and could imagine each league scored accordingly. As said previously, I suspect the issue is we are having to dig deeper down as a result of more and more using a similar approach and/or a deliberate choice.
Yes the arrogance that they believe they can buy players from inferior leagues that they think can do a job in a more competitive league.
I live across the water from where Mr. Moneyball made his name with the Oakland Athletics. The one HUGE difference over here is that there is no promotion or relegation. You have a good year, or bad year, you start next season in the same league, with the same teams. Sure, your income and profits suffer, but not as badly as with relegation, and you don't have to risk pushing the boat out for the hope of promotion. Apples and Oranges.
We aren't using the Moneyball theory. This is only brought up because Billy Beane is part of the ownership. He's obviously, with James Cryne got some kind of statistical input going on, but if you know what Moneyball is, it is nothing like what we're doing.
