Holding Midfield: Moneyball in football

[Holding Midfield]

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Upon the arrival of John W Henry and his merry band of stat-men from Fenway Sports Group at Liverpool, the media scrambled to find out what they could about him. FSG also ran the Boston Red Sox, a team that had endured an 86-year title drought, a touch longer than Liverpool’s, until they won the World Series in 2004, just two years after Henry and co took control of the team. What’s more, they had done it with Theo Epstein, who, at 28, was the youngest general manager in the MLB’s history. Yale graduate Epstein was a disciple of Bill James, the statistician who exposed much of the conventional wisdom in baseball as “ridiculous hokum”. The next thing the English media latched onto in regards to FSG was “moneyball”, which is where James comes in. He studied baseball statistics and found that much of what many teams were doing was irrational. For example, he found that the most important statistic was on-base percentage – something rarely considered by those in baseball – while sacrifice bunts and base-stealing were ineffective tactics. Baseball by and large rejected James’ findings; after all, it was how they had always done it and it hadn’t [...]

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[curtis290]

Gonna bump this as I thought it was a great article. The principle is great: look at where the market distortions are and exploit them. Buy players that the market naturally undervalues at the time, sell the ones who are overvalued by the market. If you combine new tactics with this you could build a team of cheap players that were not considered very good but fit a different style. The example in the article was Freiburg in the Bundesliga, although I don't think that could happen in the modern game because of how tactical it has gotten (I don't think you can start playing a completely new style of play in a league and be very successful; it seems like you have to play to a league's style. Although I could be completely wrong.)

To use the Prem as an example, if an English club used the 'Moneyball idea' and started buying slower, smaller players who were skilled but weren't considered to be very good because of their lack of size and speed, it probably wouldn't work because you have to play to the strengths of the league (again, I don't know if quick tactical revolutions can happen in the modern game; I think that type of thing will be a slower process). What that club would be better off doing is finding players abroad that fit the Prem style but not the style of other leagues and are therefore undervalued there. So they should look for bigger, faster players in places like Spain, Italy, Holland, Portugal, or Latin America that might have been overlooked there because of their poorer ball skills and are undervalued because of their lack of success in those leagues. Also, clubs should most definitely look outside of Europe for players. Although there is a greater risk they won't be able to adapt to the style of play (or lifestyle), they are paid much less than players in Europe and the clubs are usually in so much debt they'd have to accept small transfer fees.

To me what makes Moneyball interesting though is the use of statistics to find out what these market distortions are. Baseball is an extremely statistical sport (the most in the world probably) but football is not so much. Or at least we haven't tried as much as in other sports. So it'd be interesting if someone could use very in-depth statistics in new ways and use them to manage a team.

A minor quibble is that the Red Sox definitely didn't use the Moneyball strategy, as they've been very big spenders. But it'd be very interesting to see FSG or some other management team pioneer a whole new style.

Would be also interesting if someone tried to use the 'Moneyball' strategy in FM.

 

[Steve*]

Another great article by Holding midfield. Iv signed up a few weeks ago purely for the quality of writing and discussion on there. Currently doing a Parma save with a similar approach ie. buying all round decent players rather than great individuals at attacking or defending. First 3 seasons I finished mid table but mid way through the 4th season im sitting in 4th and have a good chance of getting into Europe. Wasnt easy to make the tactic as it had to be mirrored on the Dutch Total football.

Well, it had been suggested before the summer that Liverpool have been looking at player statistics as the main idea behind signings but not sure if thats still the case