Brentford Moneyball

[WISAW]

Taken from the bbc site;

"The Griffin Park club, who appointed Dutchman Marinus Dijkhuizen as their new head coach this month, have decided to apply statistical modelling to player recruitment.
They will now use a mathematical-based approach to recruitment, introduced by owner Matthew Benham, which has been referred to as a 'Moneyball' approach.
Moneyball is a system which emerged in baseball, in which the use of undervalued statistics allowed financially disadvantaged teams to compete with better-resourced rivals."

I've often wondered how this approach would work in football. Will be interesting to see how it works out. I'm not confident however, obviously different sorts of games, but the fitness, awareness and general ability of the whole squad is much more of a factor in football than in baseball in my opinion. Still, will be intriguing to see how it goes for them.

 

[niksmith1410]

I'm glad it is them that is experimenting with this and not us. But good luck to them. Personally I think football has too many dimensions and variables for this system to work.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

 

[MOLINEUXWOLFIE]

WISAW, see also: soccernomics

edited to add: as far as I know Stoke use it

 

[northnorfolkwolf]

We can all guess what Mark Warburton, a man who took them to 5th, thought of this?!

 

[Deleted member 4456]

We can all guess what Mark Warburton, a man who took them to 5th, thought of this?!

Considering his past you would've thought he'd look on something like this more favourably.

 

[Skrilla]

Verdict: Relegation next season, hopefully.

 

[Deleted member 4456]

Verdict: Relegation next season, hopefully.

I would love it if we could send them down at Griffin Park on the final day.

 

[Dan G WWFC]

Statistically Lovran and Phil Jones were the best defenders in the premiership last season. Statistics never beat a good eye.

 

[Vietnam Wolf]

I can just imagine this place if Steve Morgan had made that announcement, and rightly so. Just sets them up for ridicule if it fails. I hope it does.

 

[Wolf of Winslow]

Statistically Lovran and Phil Jones were the best defenders in the premiership last season. Statistics never beat a good eye.

Problem with stats is you can make them say what u want them to , pick out only the bits u want .. Like the Man U long ball team stats

 

[Very Proud (AKA Still Proud)]

With a game lie baseball or even cricket it works because the play is repetitive and predictable e.g bowler bowls at batsman who hits or misses and repeat. Football is random with so many different elements, bordering on art at times, can see it going so far, e.g. Goal snorers, free kick on target but that doesn't show the players total contribution, nor his chemistry with other players. Can't see it working

 

[NewarkWolf]

Statistically Lovran and Phil Jones were the best defenders in the premiership last season. Statistics never beat a good eye.

And jack price makes the wolves team tick........... Stats are sometimes a load of $$$$$$$$!

 

[Sedgley Gold N Black]

Statistically Lovran and Phil Jones were the best defenders in the premiership last season. Statistics never beat a good eye.

They'll be looking for players that are undervalued and avoiding those that are overvalued by those with a 'good eye' and there are plenty of examples of both out there.

It'll be interesting to see how they get on, its a huge gamble that's probably going to be a fantastic success or a complete failure.

I'd certainly be looking at some of their current squad though given that they would all now have a statistically defined 'value' at which they become overvalued.

 

[Monkey Man]

Just imagine they get promoted? Every team will be trying to use the system, thus rendering it useless.

Going to be very interesting seeing it develop.

 

[Deleted member 4456]

Just imagine they get promoted? Every team will be trying to use the system, thus rendering it useless.

Going to be very interesting seeing it develop.

Not at all. Different clubs would still look for different things. Any club with access to the Opta statistics API and a programmer could build a statistical model like this to suit their own needs.

 

[Kenny Hibbitt is my hero]

The Michael Lewis book was a fascinating read.

But this was all to do with the fact that baseball is a statistics based game and that the key statistics being used by most clubs were outdated. The Oakland A's used more relevant stats, on base percentage for example rather than home runs or RBIs, to their advantage at the recruitment stage and to make the most of their significantly weaker finances. As a result, most teams now adopt some sort of "sabermatics" in their recruitment policies. But it has not taken over the game.

And since more teams use it, as pointed out by others, it took away Oakland's advantage pretty quickly.

 

[The_Blade]

Didn't Liverpool do this under Damien Comolli? Resulted in the purchase of Andy Caroll.