Everyone will be working this way in 15 years time. It makes perfect sense, certainly in picking players to look at and the amount of crap managers out there. With reference to Warburton, whilst he comes across very well, I think Brentfords success is no accident and this means of doing things has had a massive eefect on them. They are right to kick him out if he's not signing up to it.
Football still seems reluctant to make use of the wealth of data that is available to professional clubs, and there's still too much faith put in feelings over statistics. As Carrabuh says, the clubs that keep signing players on the back of scouting trips and YouTube videos will get left behind.
Matthew Benham is proving that a computer program crunching stats to create a cost efficient winning machine doesn't need household names and an experienced old head picking the side and signing players. Is it him and his laptop making Brentford a contender or Warburton? .
I guess vaguely connected by managerial styles, Mark Bentley of Grays Athletic deserves a mention today. His team are 2-0 down and he subs himself on. He scores the goal to bring them level, saves a penalty, then sets up the winner. Incredible.
You can't argue with their league position, but the number of goals they concede could very likely hurt them in the final league placings.
I wonder if Carrabuh is as big a fan of the Godfather of football analysis, that being the Norwegian Charles Reep who Graham Taylor idolised and who's mantra he followed to bring such rapid success to his Watford team of the early 80's and the birth of direct, route-one hoofball? I suspect not somehow. Reep's in-depth analysis focussed on the fact that more than 85% of all goals emanate from less than three passing moves, and he strongly advocated the use of pumping the ball into the opposition's final third as many times as possible in a match. Taylor went to town with this, and his teams were guilty of lumping the ball into the opponent's penalty box in excess of 150 times a game - quite an astonishing figure, and it must have been horrific to watch - which was the creation of long ball football as we know it today, or the "Ipswich Way" as it is also known nowadays. This method did bring relative success to the Hornets, Taylor took them from the bottom division to the higher echelons of the first, with an FA Cup Final appearance along the way. These methods soon got found out though, and he learned they could only take you so far when playing against quality opposition able to easily nullify it. Quite staggering that the guy was ever allowed to manage England however! There is an excellent chapter all about it in Jonathan Wilson's "Inverting the Pyramid" book, a superb read for anyone interested in the complexities of the beautiful game
That theory could have been worked out on a zx spectrum. His analysis does not sound in depth to be honest. I have no doubt that a computer could come up with the best tactics and best team providing all the info and methodology was correct. What a computer cannot do however is create a rapport with the players.
Very good point. While stats can give you a clear insight into how a player plays and the best players to fit a particular model, you still need someone to motivate those players every game and train them up to the standards required.
I think the theory works well but there will be a cap in how far a team like brentford can take it, which is actually the case in baseball too, because the best players are still expensive. It will also require far more metrics than in baseball as its a proper team game. Baseball is especially a series of individual solo battles.
The Charles Reep an Charles Hughes style analysis was fundamentally flawed, for example is the there was a flowing 25 pass move and the penultimate pass took o flick off a defender then the final pass was made this was classed as a move of less than three passes. Personally I think Inverting the Pyramid should be handed to every child once they show an interest in football.
Indeed, my original copy was the 2008 edition, but Wilson updated it in 2010 and included a chapter on Barcalona in it, so I bought the updated edition too. Every football fan should read this book.
For what it's worth, Sam Allardyce was actually one of the first in the 'modern era' to employ a 'stats-based' approach during his time at Bolton. Worked wonders for him/them.
