Ever since I read A Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football by
Paul Zimmerman (a book about the NFL) in the early ‘70s, my perspective on
sports has been somewhat different from the average fan. Specifically, I recognized that as a fan I
didn’t really know what I was talking about.
It didn’t stop me from talking about sports but I often exercised
caution in asserting that I knew what I was talking about. This qualifies me to write a blog about a
sport I have only followed seriously for four years.
In the early ‘80s, I starting
reading the annual Bill James Baseball
Abstract and I realized that it was not just fans that didn’t know
things. Much of what the experts who
played, coached, and ran Major League Baseball believed to be true simply was
not true. Given the vast amount of
detailed statistics extending back over a hundred years, it was virtually
inevitable that baseball would be the first sport subject to intense
statistical analysis. The fact that
football lacked such statistics meant that it would be one of the last sports
to submit to such analysis. Yet one
thing was clear to me—given what Bill James was writing—the less a sport was
subject to statistical analysis, the more certain it was that even the experts did not know what
they were talking about. It was certain
that some players and their skill sets were overvalued while other players and
their skill sets were undervalued.
(Using this type of analysis to run a team is often referred to by
the term “Moneyball” from the book Moneyball
by Michael Lewis. Moneyball did not originate this type of analysis.
It merely reported on what was going on with the Oakland A’s.)
Of course, that is no longer
entirely true. Football is counting many
more statistics these days including dribbles, interceptions, shots on target,
and so forth. Very likely some
teams have partially cracked the code and are taking advantage of this
knowledge in the transfer market or in training methods. However, unlike
baseball with its surprisingly simple, yet strong, mathematical relationship
between on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and runs created no such
similar relationship is yet (publically?) known in football. No one can say that, for example, each
successful dribble creates .09 goals.
Nevertheless the questions are being
asked. I have read two books that address these kind of issues:
The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer is Wrong
by David Sally and Chris Anderson and Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil
Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey—and Even Iraq—Are Destined to
Become the Kings of the World’s Most Popular Sport by Simon Kuper and
Stefan Szymanski. (If anyone knows of
other similar books, please let me know.)
In this post I will focus on a few interesting issues raised in Soccernomics and relate them back—a little
bit--to Southampton FC today.
Soccernomics has a significant discussion of
transfers, their relative importance, and the types of mistakes that are commonly made. The most interesting conclusion to me from
this part of the book is that relative transfer spending only accounted for 16%
of the variation in league position for English clubs from 1978 through
1997. Salary spending accounted for 92%
of the variation. In the BPL from 1998
through 2007 salary spending accounted for 89% of the variation.
Given the discussion in my last
post, this point is critical to Southampton’s chances of progressing into the
upper echelons of the BPL. According to
The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/may/01/premier-league-accounts-club-by-club-david-conn)
in 2012-2013 Southampton’s wages were 47 million pounds. Manchester City’s wages were the highest in
the league at 233 million pounds. Given
the strong correlation between pay and performance challenging ManCity seems
pretty hopeless. However, if Southampton
can take steps to increase the salary it can afford to pay and is legally
permitted to pay, it can ensure its safety and, perhaps progress further up the
table. Of course, this correlation isn’t
perfect. QPR was relegated with wages of
78 million pounds--the seventh highest in the league. It does matter who you pay, not just how
much.
This correlation can be seen in
action this summer. If Southampton could
have legally given all its players the kind of salary increases they could get
elsewhere, maybe fewer of them would have wanted to leave. Perhaps they would have viewed these pay
raises as demonstrating the club’s ambition. Then a few high quality players
could have been added—again without worrying about any salary
limits—demonstrating even more ambition.
However, the lack of such pay raises did not reflect a lack of
ambition. No matter how much money
Katharina Liebherr might have wanted to spend, the salary cap rules would not
permit her to increase the total salary spending by very much without a lot of
positive net transfer income.
One of the stupider transfer
inefficiencies discussed in Soccernomics
is the way new transfers are treated upon their arrival. Even though teams spend Millions of Pounds to
bring in new players, they seem willfully foolish in their failure to help them
to settle into a new town or country.
(Very likely this has changed for some clubs since Soccernomics was published in 2009.) Southampton should probably have someone
fluent in Serbian on call to assist Dusan Tadic and someone fluent in Italian
to assist Graziano Pelle. It doesn’t
matter how good their English might be.
The players would do better with someone to talk to in their own
language and who was familiar with the Southampton area. It would also be useful if the team helped
all new transfers to find a place to live.
When a player with a family is transferred to a new city, the team
should help the family move in since the player will almost certainly be too
busy to do the job himself. Assistance
in picking out good schools for any children would also no doubt be
appreciated. Quite possibly, this type
of help would increase future loyalty to the team, but perhaps that is too much
to expect.
Soccernomics
also analyzed racism in football, penalty kicks, the relative popularity of
football in various countries, fan loyalty and happiness, the effects of
poverty on football players and nations, and why is it is “absurd” to expect
England to win the World Cup. It is
well worth reading if you want a new perspective on football and if you want to
learn what things you have always believed about football were not true. On the other hand, it may also cause you to
wonder how other fans can be so stupid and ignorant. And after all, a little knowledge is a
dangerous thing.
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