Data Analysis on Players.

[kentblues]

I don’t get what the issue is as nobody’s said anything about us not looking at players, scouting them or Kev not having a say at who comes in. It’s merely another tool to help support recruitment which people have moaned about not being decent enough.

Exactly. The one thing I would highlight is that as you say it’s an extra step. That could suggest a slower process. If it stops bad decisions and helps make good ones that is not bad. But the process needs to ensure we are not slow to decisions and surely the data piece can be kicked off early and run in parallel. In which case it might actually save time. Please let’s not leave this extra step to the very end. Justin was a Project Manager so I’m sure this would be a red flag.

Re the mention elsewhere of a Director of Football. A no for me. One there’s the cost. Two I see loads of clubs with a Director of Football consistently sacking managers and leaving the Director of Football in place. They don’t seem to take responsibility for results yet want to decide who the manager gets as tools for the job. Manager goes they should both go. That would sharpen the mind.

I think it’s better to think of the manager as a long term recruitment and have succession planning within the management team. Let’s not have multiple cooks who when it goes wrong all point at each other.

My thought anyway.

 

[Nick Prawnby]

As somebody who was actually AT the AGM and Q&A.......
The analytics will be the 'last page' of any dossier on a potential player and just another part of the process, not taking over from the conventional system.
Can't see the problem, the club needs keep up with the trend towards helping recruitment with technology.
Y'all are reading this on a smartphone right?
Not scribbled on a notepad in biro

 

[Dutch Branch]

It's ridiculous. We're non-league ffs

It’s total madness

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

WE NEED A DIRECTOR OF FOOTBALL!

It's all well and good having this Money ball approach and having a transfer committee. It stops the club having another Phil Brown situation where we have a squad of players that only he can coach, leading to a mass clear out when the new manager comes in, only for the process to be rinsed and repeated each time.

It doesn't make sense to have a manager only sign who he wants with no structure for the club moving forward.

HOWEVER

Without a director of football, we have noone high up who is qualified to help make decisions.

Kev will go to the board "This is the system we are playing and these are the strengths and weaknesses in the squad" and then balance that against expectations.

John will then send in a report of players that he believes will strengthen Kev's squad

The transfer committee will then do their "Money Ball" check list and then proceed to talk business with the selected targets.

This is where it breaks down.

NOBODY ON THE TRANSFER COMMITTEE KNOWS FOOTBALL!!!!

Not to mention half of the decision makers aren't even in the same continent

Right now it's a mess and just like when we had the em***go, we are missing out on targets.

We are currently functioning like a semi pro team

"Oh sorry we couldn't extend Goldings loan, so and so was on holiday"

(not a fact, just an ironic example / prediction)

I’m calling bull****.

Everyone involved (COSU, Maher etc ) have always preached a collaborative approach. So why wouldn’t John Still and Kevin Maher be on the committee?

Wouldn’t it be Tom Lawrence who conducts negotiations - someone who has been in football a number of years (albeit usually under an embargo)?

I can imagine things getting held up by Jason Brown being in HK and Shivaas Gulati in Seattle and Justin Rees in Australia or Amsterdam making timezones a challenge and not being able to give same day answers when agents call. I can also imagine it would be difficult to schedule calls given that they have other commitments and for none of them it’s their main focus. This would be frustrating when situations can change from hour to hour.

 

[Shrimper]

The data-based approach has worked pretty well for Brighton.
If it's good enough for them..

They have money as well, which helps

 

[Gremlin]

Yeah I get they want to try it out but midway through the season fgs .. I would much rather trust JS and he’s army and I’m sure the coaching staff would too they been in the game for years ..

I'd say embed the data element into the process asap so that it's fully operational for the summer, when most of the recruitment happens. We can't afford to have yet another summer disrupted.

 

[kentblues]

I’m calling bull****.

Everyone involved (COSU, Maher etc ) have always preached a collaborative approach. So why wouldn’t John Still and Kevin Maher be on the committee?

Wouldn’t it be Tom Lawrence who conducts negotiations - someone who has been in football a number of years (albeit usually under an embargo)?

I can imagine things getting held up by Jason Brown being in HK and Shivaas Gulati in Seattle and Justin Rees in Australia or Amsterdam making timezones a challenge and not being able to give same day answers when agents call. I can also imagine it would be difficult to schedule calls given that they have other commitments and for none of them it’s their main focus. This would be frustrating when situations can change from hour to hour.

Surely decision making would be delegated to some extent within the committee. And if you are on said committee you are making a commitment that involves being available? Few people at that level work 9-5, as had been said technology also means there should be good availability.

If you can’t commit the time then let someone else sit on the committee?

If there is someone we really want to sign, we are in negotiations, there is another club involved, and the agent says give us an extra £100 per week and we will sign but we need to know in the next hour as the other club have a deadline, then the idea we would have to walk away because one of the committee is in the wrong time zone is, I hope, a complete nonsense. I’m sure contingency is built in. Without doubt many player negotiations are dynamic and can change quickly and unexpectedly as demonstrated all to recently.

 

[kentblues]

Anyway who are we signing for tomorrow?

 

[ShrimperLee]

I will start by saying that I am very much pro the data analytics side of things, it definitely can, has and will help clubs to formulate a sharper image of what a certain player can bring vs another similar player. If we weren't doing it before this season (and of course I very much doubt that we were with the Rat in charge) then it can only be beneficial going forward. It will help our club to identify targets better, making the club more efficient and "businesslike" on the whole, saving erroneous transfer fees etc. But here is the BUT. It MUST go hand in hand with actual scouting that people like John Still are masters at. John might find a player he regards as a good target, and we then might "run the analytics" to see if he fits the profile of player that the management team are looking for. I can't help thinking that a computer might not have found Stanley Victor Collymore being unable to get a game on the wing for Crystal Palace all those years ago, but dear old Colin Murphy did find him. There must always be aspects of both approaches.

 

[Sherif H]

Please don't go making any comparisons to the analytical approach used by Matthew Benham @ Brentford or Tony Bloom @ Brighton.

Both are basically prodigies when it comes to working with numbers - Benham from his background in finance, and Bloom from his betting/poker.

Critically, both are also minted and well capable of financing Premier League clubs. We, on the other hand, haven't got a pot to **** in. We are by far the largest club in this league, but barely have the buying power of a Wealdstone or Ebbsfleet.

 

[Gremlin]

As somebody who was actually AT the AGM and Q&A.......
The analytics will be the 'last page' of any dossier on a potential player and just another part of the process, not taking over from the conventional system.
Can't see the problem, the club needs keep up with the trend towards helping recruitment with technology.
Y'all are reading this on a smartphone right?
Not scribbled on a notepad in biro

Exactly this.

Imagine the scenario. We're recruiting for a particular position, say LWB. Originally there were five potential targets and they have been whittled down, for whatever reason, to three. On paper (in biro) there doesn't seem to be much between them, but the data tells a different story and one of the candidates is a fair bit ahead of the others.

Without the data we'd presumably have spent time sounding out all three players and would maybe have ended up favouring one of the weaker (by data) ones, whereas with the data we're able to zoom in on the preferred target from the outset.

I'm sure folks are asking why we're not seeing speedier recruitment already but the data element is still being worked into the process.

 

[Moley]

Everyone was happy when Stan said it?

Completely different mate.

 

[kentblues]

Exactly this.

Imagine the scenario. We're recruiting for a particular position, saw LWB. Originally there were five potential targets and they have been whittled down, for whatever reason, to three. On paper (in biro) there doesn't seem to be much between them, but the data tells a different story and one of the candidates is a fair bit ahead of the others.

Without the data we'd presumably have spent time sounding out all three players and would maybe have ended up favouring one of the weaker (by data) ones, whereas with the data we're able to zoom in on the preferred target from the outset.

I'm sure folks are asking why we're not seeing a speedier recruitment already but the data element is still being worked into the process.

We don’t know if it’s holding things up or not (the hint from Tom is that it is?)

However, surely this wouldn’t need to impact players on loan to the end of the season? We can’t fill the bench so even if we bright a couple of loans in we would still have room for at least a couple on permanents?

I know Kev isn’t a great fan of loans- probably recent events don’t help..

 

[SUFCGoals]

Completely different mate.

How so?

 

[rlb999]

I get that data is important, but it's not the be all and end all. Take a LWB who the stats show is pinging in crosses in the NLS because his current manager expects him to cross at every opportunity. We sign him up and we won't get the same player because he'll be told to retain possession first and cross only when there's a definite opportunity or no other option. I might have expressed that badly, but you get the general gist - a players stats can change massively depending on how the team he's playing in is set up, and what his manager expects of him.

 

[in the know]

I think a problem is going to be that teams that operate this sort of technical data involvement have numerous personnel to decipher analyse and present findings. Ipswich have up to 20 employees doing this full time (of course they have a lot money now), a little while ago we had one and I'm not sure that was their full time work.
We would need more staff with the skills and football related knowledge which must result in more cost.
Plus, as I've said previously on this subject. It's fine if recruiting from the league's above where info is readily available to analyse, but when looking at NLS, NLN, or our own league with some being part time, the info just isn't there or in a form to be analysed.

 

[Gremlin]

I get that data is important, but it's not the be all and end all. Take a LWB who the stats show is pinging in crosses in the NLS because his current manager expects him to cross at every opportunity. We sign him up and we won't get the same player because he'll be told to retain possession first and cross only when there's a definite opportunity or no other option. I might have expressed that badly, but you get the general gist - a players stats can change massively depending on how the team he's playing in is set up, and what his manager expects of him.

Agree. That's why the process is the traditional recruitment one PLUS data, rather than purely data.

 

[Supa Shrimpa]

I've just done some data analysis, and my results are as follows...
Pepple and GSM have notched a few goals. The others haven't !

 

[SeldomSeenShrimper]

I’m calling bull****.

Everyone involved (COSU, Maher etc ) have always preached a collaborative approach. So why wouldn’t John Still and Kevin Maher be on the committee?

Wouldn’t it be Tom Lawrence who conducts negotiations - someone who has been in football a number of years (albeit usually under an embargo)?

I can imagine things getting held up by Jason Brown being in HK and Shivaas Gulati in Seattle and Justin Rees in Australia or Amsterdam making timezones a challenge and not being able to give same day answers when agents call. I can also imagine it would be difficult to schedule calls given that they have other commitments and for none of them it’s their main focus. This would be frustrating when situations can change from hour to hour.

I never said they weren't, KM and JS are on the committee, but they don't sign it off on their own

 

[Callumturner22]

I'd say embed the data element into the process asap so that it's fully operational for the summer, when most of the recruitment happens. We can't afford to have yet another summer disrupted.

Yeah it need to be fully operational for sure and if it not right in summer for recruitment wise it could be another long season ahead .