Excellent read on analysis in Football

Very good read indeed. Thanks.

 

Very interesting. I am currently reading a book " Expected Goals" by Rory Smith. It charts the development of the use of analytics in modern football.
Liverpool's research department is headed by Ian Graham, a polymer physicist and includes a Harvard graduate recruited from CERN, a champion chess player and an astrophysicist.
A central focus for them is Expected Possession Value. Using both the kind of event data that is used by Opta and tracking data-working out where everyone is on the pitch at anyone time, using a similar sort of camera system pioneered by ProZone- the research department's model calculates a teams' chances of scoring a goal based on every time a player makes a decision whether it is to pass, tackle or dribble. It can tell Liverpool which approaches are most valuable, which decisions are are optimal in which phase of the game, which type of attacks are most profitable.

As fans we often look at bare statistics but there is often a difference between data and what is actually happening on the pitch. In the 2014 World Cup semi-final Brazil had more shots, more passes, more corners yet Germany won 7-1.

 

Nice to learn that City are ahead of the curve in some things. It must be 35 years since I was a ball boy at VP but even back then we were given instructions as to how quickly (or slowly) to get the ball back in to play depending on what was happening in the match.