Clubs play ball over transfer money

While Dick Advocaat’s resignation at Sunderland was the first managerial casualty in the Premier League season, Brendan Rodgers became the winner of the annual sack race as he was dismissed by Liverpool following a dull draw away at city-rivals, Everton.

Ahead of the appointment of his replacement, Jurgen Klopp, much was being made of Liverpool’s mixed results, not on the field, but off it in the transfer market.

Was this poor judgement on the part of Rodgers or the whole transfer committee of which he was a part? Would the new manager insist on a revamp on the policies they adopt or simply demand a greater influence over the decisions they made?

Apparently, it was neither! However, Liverpool’s results both on and off the field have come under additional scrutiny as a result of their reliance on statistics to make their decisions.

Indeed statistics in football, mirroring commerce and industry, are playing an increasingly important role in decision-making.

Data is everywhere.

Regular viewers of matches on television will be familiar with pass-completion ratios and the number of accurate crosses made by each player into the box. The information available has been fine-tuned to now include ‘important’ passes made which further stimulates conversations in coffee shops that can now include the distances covered by each player and an analysis of which individual has made the most and/or fastest sprints in a match.

Of course, the clubs themselves take this further with almost every Premier League (and indeed lower tier Championship) club paying Prozone and/or Opta for their services which can now include mid-match analysis with half-time team talks being fuelled by the information the club’s analytical team receives shortly before the interval.

Liverpool was bought by the Fenway Sports Group, which also owns the Boston Red Sox that famously use a philosophy dubbed ‘Moneyball’, a saber metrics statistical model designed to extract maximum value in the transfer market by identifying players who are performing well beyond their perceived transfer value.

The system was invented by Billy Beane of the Oakland A’s (baseball) in the 1990s when they needed to replace three star players although did not have the financial resources to do so. Following their success other sides tried to mirror their approach and the method is spreading to other sports.

Saber metrics is a model that analyses player statistics and will answer questions objectively. For example, if you were to ask any football fan the question ‘who is the best defender in the Premier League’ you would get a range of answers that would likely include Vincent Kompany or even Chris Smalling on current form. However, statistically at least, the answer would be Francis Coquelin of Arsenal who makes more interceptions and successful tackles than any other player per minute on the pitch.

Yet, despite the high-profile nature of their statistical reliance, Liverpool is not the club in England that has the greatest dependence on numerical data.

That accolade belongs to Brentford, which makes its own recent sacking of their manager, Marinus Dijkhuizen, the first to lose his job in the Championship, even more intriguing. The Dutchman was in charge for only nine matches having replaced Mark Warburton in June.

Does this quick sacking prove that the use of data has no place in football and that managers should be free to simply make their own judgment calls?

It was a massive shock for the Brentford fans when their popular manager failed to have his contract renewed in the summer over a difference of opinion, allegedly concerning his right to veto over the transfer policy. After all, he had guided this tiny club with a limited budget to promotion from the First Division and then given them a shot at the Premier League by qualifying for the play- offs in the Championship.

If that was a shock then so was the appointment of Dijkhuizen of whom little had been heard. He can consider himself extremely unfortunate at the volume of injuries suffered although has also expressed a disappointment that the majority of the players signed in the summer using the statistical model had no experience of playing English football.

Despite poor results, apparently the Dutchman was not sacked as a result of the club’s league position, rather ‘off-field’ issues. Allegedly the manager is assessed by a range of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that the club believe, over the longer term, provide a greater guide to success.

These decisions and the approach adopted by Brentford are a result of the investment in the club by Matthew Benham, a former hedge fund manager. The owner has also invested in Danish side, FC Midtjylland, where his approach has had an immediate impact.

Previously the club had achieved only two second-place finishes in the Danish Superliga yet stormed away to win the title last year and have already claimed four scalps in the Europa League this season, including that of Southampton.

The key to their success in Denmark is combining data analysis with player development. As their chairman, Rasmus Ankersen, puts it: “Using data is not perfect yet it is less imperfect than pure human judgement. There has to be a balance. The data will not tell us who to pick but where to look. You have to know what data can and cannot do for you.”

Similarly, it is important not to draw too many comparisons between Brentford and Midtjylland as the Danes have, for years, had one of the most advanced youth development academies, graduates of which now represent 50 per cent of the first team and include one of the most promising talents in Europe, Pione Sisto. The club has apparently already rejected a bid of 7 million euros from Ajax for this naturalised Dane.

There is little doubt that something did not work for Brentford with the appointment of Dijkhuizen and arguably, Rodgers at Liverpool. Yet who could argue that, at Liverpool in particular, a more rational and less emotional approach to the transfer market would not be to their benefit?

However, they are similar in that both clubs still believe that they have an edge and intend to prove it – in the long run. It will make fascinating viewing.