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Football isn't like American sports. Arsenal bought an analytics company (more than one iirc), and did absolutely nothing with it. Man City are only just getti

Football isn't like American sports. Arsenal bought an analytics company (more than one iirc), and did absolutely nothing with it. Man City are only just getting into the area. Liverpool have been doing it for a while (with fairly mixed success). There is almost no interest from management in applying analytics. Additionally, sports are not equal. Baseball suits analytics. NBA is harder. And football is harder than the NBA (by a significant degree). All of this is measurable btw. One very simple point relating to this: there is no equilibrium strategy in football, it varies based on the opposition, teams that are bottom of the league can (under certain conditions) prevent a huge obstacle to the best team in the league. Either way, it doesn't matter because almost no football teams are applying this knowledge (there are a few exceptions, some of the top teams are run by professional gamblers and they have been printing money from analytics for decades...so, in those cases, it is being applied).

hervature 5y ago
The EPL has no salary cap, the obvious winning strategy is to buy the best players. Analytics in sports usually start with finding undervalued players which is the game that weaker teams are playing, not the teams you mentioned. Also, analytics in soccer has been around for a long time: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-one-mans-bad-math-helped-ruin-decades-of-english-soccer/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-one-mans-bad-math-h...
- hogFeast 5y ago
  It isn't. Again, football is not like American Football or the NBA where, for different reasons, you can buy one player and win it all. It is very possible to produce a winning team (although not one that will likely win the league) composed only of specialist players: Fulham (got to the Europa League final), Bolton, Stoke (first-time with Pulis), Leicester...these are just teams in the recent past in one league. The vast majority of teams that try to "buy the best players" don't succeed (usually there is only one or two players currently in the game who can win games by themselves, there is a substantially larger group of players who cost essentially the same and don't perform at all) because they pay too much/buy players randomly who don't fit their system/overestimate skill. I would look more closely at what I said. I did not say that analytics hasn't been around for a long time (for some reason, the article you link fails to mention that Reep actually worked for clubs, and found some degree of success...but there is no Nash strategy, Bolton got to the Europa League playing long ball football...it is a fine strategy suggesting that it doesn't work on average means nothing because everything is conditional in football). Btw, your model of salary cap=pay most for players is obviously flawed if you consider that the non-existence of a salary cap does not occur in a vacuum. Player salaries/transfer fees are a dynamic competition so the lack of salary cap means that most players are overpriced (because clubs are inherently overoptimistic...there are clubs who make money just by developing players and selling them to bigger clubs). The actual implication of salary caps (in combination with FFP) is that success is correlated to your ability to generate revenue. It isn't that the top clubs can pay more for players, it is that they can "lose" more overpaying than anyone else. As an example, Manchester United have rock-solid sponsorship revenue (iirc, they even have a "tractor partner"...they sponsors for literally everything) so they can overpay for almost every player, lose tons of money doing so, and end up doing okay. If a club lower down the table made deals as bad, they would get relegated. No salary caps just mean the rich clubs get richer.
  - hervature 5y ago
    Your last paragraph is exactly why I bring up the salary cap. Your original thesis is “Football isn’t like American sports” and your “measure” is that is that there is no “equilibrium strategy”. Which you say without explaining what that means. It is after all a two player (two teams) zero sum game. You heavily imply that analytics are not applicable to football due to the properties of the sport itself. For all the reasons you outline in your last paragraph, many teams have ulterior goals other than actually maximizing win probability which is why analytics isn’t an emphasis. An analytics department would cost these farm teams additional money for example.
    - hogFeast 5y ago
      I am not saying that analytics cannot be applied. I have been making money applying analytics to football for years. But analytics is not some machine that you just cram data into and out come the best players. That may work with baseball it doesn't work with football because the nature of the game is totally different (another example is with NBA, NBA's scoring frequency and pitch size totally changes the dynamics...it is another invasion game, but one that has totally different properties to football). No equilibrium strategy has been explained twice. If you don't know, I can't help you. They aren't "farm teams". That only makes sense in the context of American sports (once again). Analytics is an emphasis at many of these clubs, it is how they win games (again, I am not sure if you understand that I am not talking about American sports...win probability is important because if you don't win games, you get relegated, and your club can stop existing in a few years...you need to win games).
      - vladTheInhaler 5y ago
        You've claimed that there's no equilibrium several times, but as far as I can tell, you haven't explained it even once. Do you have a citation? Or do you have some model in which football fails to satisfy the criteria?

hervature 5y ago

The EPL has no salary cap, the obvious winning strategy is to buy the best players. Analytics in sports usually start with finding undervalued players which is the game that weaker teams are playing, not the teams you mentioned. Also, analytics in soccer has been around for a long time: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-one-mans-bad-math-helped-ruin-decades-of-english-soccer/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-one-mans-bad-math-h...

hogFeast 5y ago
It isn't. Again, football is not like American Football or the NBA where, for different reasons, you can buy one player and win it all. It is very possible to produce a winning team (although not one that will likely win the league) composed only of specialist players: Fulham (got to the Europa League final), Bolton, Stoke (first-time with Pulis), Leicester...these are just teams in the recent past in one league. The vast majority of teams that try to "buy the best players" don't succeed (usually there is only one or two players currently in the game who can win games by themselves, there is a substantially larger group of players who cost essentially the same and don't perform at all) because they pay too much/buy players randomly who don't fit their system/overestimate skill. I would look more closely at what I said. I did not say that analytics hasn't been around for a long time (for some reason, the article you link fails to mention that Reep actually worked for clubs, and found some degree of success...but there is no Nash strategy, Bolton got to the Europa League playing long ball football...it is a fine strategy suggesting that it doesn't work on average means nothing because everything is conditional in football). Btw, your model of salary cap=pay most for players is obviously flawed if you consider that the non-existence of a salary cap does not occur in a vacuum. Player salaries/transfer fees are a dynamic competition so the lack of salary cap means that most players are overpriced (because clubs are inherently overoptimistic...there are clubs who make money just by developing players and selling them to bigger clubs). The actual implication of salary caps (in combination with FFP) is that success is correlated to your ability to generate revenue. It isn't that the top clubs can pay more for players, it is that they can "lose" more overpaying than anyone else. As an example, Manchester United have rock-solid sponsorship revenue (iirc, they even have a "tractor partner"...they sponsors for literally everything) so they can overpay for almost every player, lose tons of money doing so, and end up doing okay. If a club lower down the table made deals as bad, they would get relegated. No salary caps just mean the rich clubs get richer.
- hervature 5y ago
  Your last paragraph is exactly why I bring up the salary cap. Your original thesis is “Football isn’t like American sports” and your “measure” is that is that there is no “equilibrium strategy”. Which you say without explaining what that means. It is after all a two player (two teams) zero sum game. You heavily imply that analytics are not applicable to football due to the properties of the sport itself. For all the reasons you outline in your last paragraph, many teams have ulterior goals other than actually maximizing win probability which is why analytics isn’t an emphasis. An analytics department would cost these farm teams additional money for example.
  - hogFeast 5y ago
    I am not saying that analytics cannot be applied. I have been making money applying analytics to football for years. But analytics is not some machine that you just cram data into and out come the best players. That may work with baseball it doesn't work with football because the nature of the game is totally different (another example is with NBA, NBA's scoring frequency and pitch size totally changes the dynamics...it is another invasion game, but one that has totally different properties to football). No equilibrium strategy has been explained twice. If you don't know, I can't help you. They aren't "farm teams". That only makes sense in the context of American sports (once again). Analytics is an emphasis at many of these clubs, it is how they win games (again, I am not sure if you understand that I am not talking about American sports...win probability is important because if you don't win games, you get relegated, and your club can stop existing in a few years...you need to win games).
    - vladTheInhaler 5y ago
      You've claimed that there's no equilibrium several times, but as far as I can tell, you haven't explained it even once. Do you have a citation? Or do you have some model in which football fails to satisfy the criteria?