The arrival of data and analytics at football clubs has brought a lot of introspection and changes to the way that clubs operate, especially in the area of player recruitment. We are often treated to behind-the-scenes snippets from sporting directors and analysts. However, coaches have been conspicuous by their...
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Josh Hobbs looks at whether some European leagues are spending too much on the players they sign. In a recent article looking at the relationship between squad age and performance, I was able to show that there is no correlation between age and performance. One of the conclusions from...
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Josh Hobbs looks into the relationship between success and squad ages to see if there is any correlation between age and performance in football. With speculation swirling around his future, Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer made a very interesting selection decision for their recent game against Tottenham Hotspur. The...
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Josh Hobbs returns to his ‘Measuring Transfer Success Through Minutes Played’ article to see how TransferLab’s Goal Difference Added metric can clarify the findings. Last month, I published an article with Analytics FC looking at the idea of measuring transfer success by minutes played. The piece was inspired by...
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Josh Hobbs explores one way of quantifying successful transfers through looking at ‘Minutes Played’. Speaking at the recent Statsbomb conference at Stamford Bridge, Liverpool Football Club’s Head of Research, Dr Ian Graham, made the claim that, statistically speaking, over 50% of ‘big transfers’—defined in this case as those over...
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Josh Hobbs explores the idea of “attacking balance” and takes a look at how teams in the Premier League fare by that measure. “They’re a one-man team.” “If those two got injured at the same time, they’d have nothing going forward.” These are common criticisms that crop up all...
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Eric Laurie looks at the outside centre back role and explores the underlying data to see what we can learn about it. An interesting development in football throughout recent seasons has been the increased use of a back three/five with some of the clubs using this tactical feature becoming...
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Abdullah Abdullah looks at how the role of the centre forward is changing within women’s football. European football has a new name on its Champions League trophy. Last month, Barcelona Femini thrashed Chelsea Women 4-1 and in the process became the first team other than Olympique Lyon Feminin to...
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Aditya Kothari looks at the ways tracking data can be used to quantify defending more effectively. The most commonly available data today are events data, and more specifically, on-ball data. When it comes to off-ball events, the kind of data available from a defensive point of view are tackles, interceptions,...
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Piotr Wawrzynów talks us through the process of creating a tool that profiles coaches in a similar manner to how you might profile players. I love talking about coaches: their ideas, approaches, philosophies. One of my favourite things is assessing a team’s early performances and trying to predict whether the...
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