Even when they were the only ones exploiting them they weren't really winning anything though.
Okay, but they were consistently one of the eight best teams in a league of 30. In 2002, they finished with the second best record (possibly tied for first, depending on the outcome of a game the Yankees never had to play) with a bottom three salary. Not bad.
And what happens when you pair analytics with genuine resources (which Everton have, by the way)? The Red Sox and Cubs each won their first championships in over 100 years with that approach.
But I think analytical stats are really overrated in other team sports.
Proven effective in the NBA as well. Teams like the Rockets and Warriors have changed the way basketball is played by focusing on the most valuable shots in the game (at the rim, free throws, three pointers). It took an analytic argument/approach to get there but now almost everybody is doing it (or trying). And the triers will probably fail because they're behind the curve.
It matters who plays with who, and where players play, and what systems players play in in other team sports(Take Keane for example).
I agree 100%. And profiling players/teams through data analysis is a much more efficient way to create this context. The eye test matters but numbers can watch a lot more games than scouts.
IMO If you want to build a whole team around analytics over in Europe(especially the PL) you run the risk of being relegated to lower divisions. Especially when you're in the top flight of the country where teams spend big.
As I said before, it's possible to do so in NA sports as there's no risk to relegation. There's actually rewards to coming last.
I don't see this as an argument against my point. I'm arguing that we should be using analytics to produce better targets and/or verify that players we like are actually worth the money we spend on them. Not that we should adapt our strategy to only taking ultra-cheap punts on players with interesting numbers.
Example. Someone who produces football analytics content for free wrote these this summer:
https://differentgame.wordpress.com/2017/06/12/the-data-scout-gylfi-sigurdsson-v-ross-barkley-part-one/https://differentgame.wordpress.com/2017/07/04/the-data-scout-sandro-ramirez/We pay our director of football and (probably) scouts good money to evaluate players and decide who's worth signing. It's not great when someone on the internet picks out the issues with said signings so easily. We could have used that £50m in fees and over £200k a week in wages on a better class of player, or even just players who were a better fit, if the club really cared about the analytics POV.
We lack the knowledge, not the money to back it. Relegation is more likely if we keep spending our money like we have than if we get smarter about how we use it.
It's also possible to do it in the Championship and finish mid table... I get what you're saying with the limited budget and all, but not really a ringing endorsement. 
I see the sly wink so I know you understand my original point but it really is an endorsement. They have League One resources but are consistently closer to the playoff places than relegation. Clubs of a similar stature come up to the Championship every season and get slapped straight back down.
It's not as well documented but Brighton care about analytics as well and they have a real chance of staying up this season with relatively little in the way of resources. They also nabbed Pascal Groß for a small fraction of what we paid for Sigurdsson and are getting more or less the same production.
And I think it's complete nonsense to expect analytically-minded teams to conquer every competition they're in because they're smarter. It's not about that. It's about being better than your resources. We have the 6th or 7th highest wage bill in the league and top 20 wage bill in European football. Imagine getting something extra out of that. Now we're a consistent contender for the domestic cups and Europa League, with a chance to crack the CL if one of the bigger clubs falters. Sounds great to me.
Saying all that, I definitely agree we need to start getting more bang for our buck when we buy, and we need to find some unknowns on the cheap. If that means bringing in some nerdy analytics kids then I'm fine with that.
I also believe, even more, we need to start building a team through the transfer market and not just arbitrarily buying players that we think are good.
100% agreement here. And yes, analytically-minded folks whose opinions are actually valued will help.
Topic: Steven N'Zonzi (Read 14522 times)
