Arsenal’s ‘secret’ signing: club buys £2m revolutionary data company
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The "secret" purchase has been talked about for quite some time now. We'll see if it pays off. In the mean time, while we wait, Manchester United has spent a king's ransom on a teenager and so far it's looking like a great bet (yes, I know it's early still). I'm a strong believer in analytics in basketball and baseball but I wonder if in some sports, like soccer, it is harder or perhaps not possible to quantify a player's effectiveness in a scientific way. I know my skepticism sounds just like what was mentioned in the article.
Having said all of that, Arsene revolutionized scouting when he came to the PL by bringing on somewhat lesser known names from across Europe for prices that proved to be bargains. Some of those players turned into legends. Maybe with a little help he can reinvent scouting again.
There is occasional talk about doing away with the system, as it goes against a lot of employee rights principles.
Unknown players will be cheaper on both, but even if you picked them up on a one year contract and they immediately proved that their next contract should be highly paid, you've still saved a potentially huge amount on buying them before they were worth a huge signing fee.
Gradually salary will catch up based on how well they play and based on the market, and the team that found this cheap player can either stop considering him a cheap player (but still be glad he came in cheaply), or can sell him on for a profit.
The top 10 salaries in the premier league range from ~£10m/year to ~£15m/year, so consider that buying a top player and keeping them for 2 years can often cost £20m-£80m. If you can buy a player for cheap and pay him not a huge amount, you can afford to spend a few years turning him into a star player and still come out way ahead even if in those few years he wasn't giving you value other than turning into a better player.
How long does it take for a player to become legendary? "Legendary" would normally be reserved either for the very best of the best, or on a team level based on both quality but also loyalty - as such you'd rarely see someone be called a legend before spending quite a few years at a club. But a player can go from relatively unknown to "shit he's really good" in as little as a season potentially - maybe he was playing in a league that doesn't get as much attention from countries with the bigger leagues, maybe he needed better team-mates around him to bring out his best, maybe a manager or coach helped him change his playing style very quickly, etc.
As for what is considered a "legend" I really don't know, football is weird like that. It could be that you achieve this status by being an aggressive no-bullshit kinda guy (Vinnie Jones at Wimbledon), a world class player who stays at the same club his entire life (Ryan Giggs @ Man Utd) or just being an insanely prolific striker who scores for fun .
On this topic though, various newspapers\magazines\sites periodically publish "worst transfers" lists which are basically filler (everyone who cares already knows who will be on the lists), but which could be surprisingly enlightening for someone who's not familiar with football's transfer scene. This one's a bit advert-y but you'll get the gist: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1610214-13-stupidest-tran...
Clubs 'sell' players who are already contracted to them, to other clubs, in order to have the contract nullified. The price can be tens of millions of euro. The buying club will tie down the new player to a long contract as part of the purchase, perhaps 4 or 5 years.
Wages are low for young players, but will be increased rapidly if the player emerges as a real talent that other clubs would want, which gives the club the chance to extend the contract through renegotiation. A longer contract for a highly rated young player would mean higher wages also as part of the bargain, although contracts can be renegotiated and extended with higher wages at any time, if the club views the player as an asset that they wish to keep.
When they extend that contract it generally means that another club who tries to buy will have to pay more, and usually wages are at least matched and often increased by the buying club.
Sorry that's not a succinct answer.
Take the example of James Rodríguez[1], a young Colombian player. His "value" suddenly skyrocketed[2] when he scored this wonder goal[3] in the 2014 World cup. Next thing, Real Madrid snapped him up for €80million, the decision at least partially influenced by Real's "Galaticos"[4] transfer policy, and the fact that Real can increase their commercial influence in a Spanish speaking country because Rodríguez is Colombian.
Other factors that influence a players value:
- time left on contract (longer time means more money)
- "marketability" e.g. player's ability to sell lots of club merchandise, and improve the club's brand
- perceived desperation of the buying/selling club (do they have a desperate need for a top class striker to make up for a lack of goals?)
- if there is a bidding war between clubs (e.g. young French striker Antony Martial was subject to a bidding war between Manchester United and Chelsea, dramatically driving up his value.)
- perceived transfer war chest of the buying club
- player's age
- if the player came off the back of a successful international tournament, which dramatically (sometimes artificially) showcases their skill. Sometimes teams will buy a player ahead of the tournament to prevent a later bidding war.
- skill of the player's agent (e.g. Raheem Sterling to Man City)
- then players skill and so on...
Every deal is a virtual once-off, it's always a bargain in hindsight[5] (whether you pay little or big money or not) and the player exceeds whatever the initial expectations were.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rodr%C3%ADguez
[2] http://www.transfermarkt.com/james-rodriguez/profil/spieler/...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GESyL3MkgNU
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1cticos
[5] http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/a...
- Country of origin (home grown player quotas, visas, participation in national team (especially African cup of nations that occurs mid season).
- Attractiveness (something Madrid apparently value as part of their brand, and marketability)
- Mentality (Mario...)
- Position (typically higher the further up the pitch they play)
- Previous contract value. A number of players signed by big clubs then released are on high wages, and expect they to be met.
- time left on contract (shorter time means higher wage demands)
Arsene certainly revolutionised scouting, but I think now it's a lot more well understood by other managers.
I think if you look at some of the more recent meteoric rises, they all seems to come from lesser leagues or clubs, BVB/Juventus/Atlético Madrid/Porto, and to some extent Liverpool/Spurs (Bale/Suarez/Sterling/Coutinho/Kane).
I think signing a player with potential is only part of the issue, the key is playing, developing and nurturing them. With teams like BVB/Juventus/Atlético Madrid/Porto they are either in easier leagues where a player doesn't have to be the finished article to excel, or financially constrained to not be able to purchase the finished article. With Spurs and Liverpool they fall into the later category so are forced to give youth players a chance.
Take Kevin De Bruyne as an example, an obvious talent purchased by Chelsea, but not played because he wasn't quite finished (perhaps only in reputation rather than ability). Sold to play in a lesser league where he excelled, and then purchased for 50 million where his stature and starting place are then almost granted.
These days I think Arsene is stuck in a position where he has the money to spend, but ideally want's to return to his roots of nurturing young players. However the fans and board aren't willing to gamble on youth, in favor of signing 40/50 million finished articles.
A few million on an analytic company isn't going to break the bank, and may be more valuable in opposition analysis than finding the next rough diamond.
The analytical approach is clearly working for other teams too. The game is slowly changing and people are finally seeing the worth in the stats.
Analytic no doubt played a part in their signing, but it's hard to argue that they are exceptional examples of recruitment in the way Lewandowski or Kagawa were to Dortmund.
That said, even if none of them go down in the books as legends, they can still be excellent examples of great value purchases.
None were say playing for say Halmstads BK or unknown to everyone in the top tear other than vai some obscure stats system...
However in fairness to Wegner, I think Danny Welbeck was identified to be a potential "hidden gem" but unfortunately he has been plauged by injuries. And it's hard to criticize one for being unable to find the likes of Henry.
In all seriousness, I don't think arsene's ability to unearth hidden gems and turn them into 10/20/30 million $ players has completely gone. I mean FFS hector bellerin (not really unearthed from some hidden continent in Africa, he was bought as teenager from Barcalona) was a complete unknown and now is dead locked for the first team spot for Arsenal. This is the unknown youngster who, within a span of 1.5 years, went from nothin to first team start. He just played against Bayern Munich which is possibly the best team in the world, was able to keep Douglas Costa off the score sheet (top top winger/stricker) and to top it off, made the most insane interception I have ever seen. His pace is literally electric and even sitting at home on my couch I can feel the people in the Emirates standing on edge when he starts racing forwards.
This is HN, can we have some geographical accuracy and keep the casual stereotyping to a minimum? First of all Africa is itself a continent, second of all it is not exactly unknown.
Just because some soccer-watching people don't know much about it doesn't mean that comments about "some hidden place in Africa" are particularly appropriate for a more general audience.
Between Opta's human-based on-the-ball event tracking, and TRACAB's computer vision player tracking solutions that they provide to the Premier League, there's a bunch of interesting computer science and business going on around this stuff.
It seems an eternity ago that he swept into the league with fresh new ideas. Nowadays many people (wrongly) consider him a stubborn old man who has been passed by by the modern game.
Guess he still has a few tricks left though.
I also think he is not the type of guy brag about his tricks.
But this is just for scouting. I'm yet to see someone can get all the data on each games, and help in coming up with tactics and strategy for planning the next match. Perhaps employ some ML too!
But Wenger is a sort of 'old fashioned' coach. He prefers focusing on how his players can do better, rather than trying to focus on the weaknesses of the opponent, which is definitely not 'modern'. This has been slowly changing the past few seasons however.
That being said, I'm definitely no #WOB just in case you think that.
I do agree with your above points, but he has his football (sorry American) philosophy which not most fans understand.
The past decade, he cut his spending to just build a new stadium for Arsenal, budget is tight, so what to do? Bring in the new blood, and the hard data + analytics help!
I'm hoping to see he can also bring in some data-driven approach on his on-field tactics and off-field strategy.
About football the sport, I've always seen him as 'progressive' because for example he has always advocated for video replay technology to be used, goal-line technology to be used etc. And so it's definitely possible that he's not afraid of using all the technological help he can for coaching.
It's just that he has rejected using 'technology' to help his coaching in the past. By which I'm referring specifically about him not using video replays of how his opponents play to coach his players with (which has since changed). But I think that is more the case of just not being part of his coaching philosophy, rather than not wanting to use 'technology' or something.
But Bayern still mostly dominated and played really well. Arsenal's goal was mainly due a horror error by Neuer, he really should have caught or punched that. (Yes it's a set piece so anything can happen, but other than Walcott's header, Sanchez's chance and Giroud's late header from a corner, I don't really remember many more threatening set pieces, so Neuer should have really dealt with that, especially after the Walcott save.)
The only 'flaws' that Bayern had were that they didn't finish. Costa should have scored. Lewandowski should have scored maybe twice even though it was a quiet game for him by his standards. (Sanchez's mistake was what lead to Costa's chance on goal too.)
That last goal by Ozil was really just more of a case of Bellerin being a freak surprisingly right at the end of the match rather than Arsenal specifically exploiting anything. Arsenal was not high pressing (as a team) on that play, it was just a mistake (slow pass) combined with the incredible anticipation and speed from Bellerin (not to mention the desire to bolt into the box rather than jog to the corner flag).
In fact, you could clearly see throughout most of the match that Bayern was the one that kept wanting to target Nacho. Which was pretty weird because if they did their homework, they should have known how massively impressive Nacho has been recently.
> This has been slowly changing the past few seasons however.
And despite all of what I just said, I am acknowledging that Arsene isn't as 'old-fashioned' as he was maybe 5 years ago. Because that comment was more of an observation in general of the post-Highbury era, not literally the past few days when it's obvious that there's more to Arsene's game nowadays.
If you wanted to use a recent example anyway, the game against United would have been a much better example imo (league games is generally when you should be 'exploting' anyway, not in the cl, because you should be expecting anything in cl games, just because of the occasion). You could clearly see that Arsenal specifically targetted United's slow midfield by high pressing on them (Walcott's and Ozil's workrate was impressive). And they were basically one-twoing their way past Bastian "cannot run no more" Schweinsteiger the whole match.
At some level soccer is about creating space for yourself or for your teammates, this is what this player does (following Suarez' clue) and hopefully the new data companies are capturing this (versus silly stats like possession).
Football seems like a particularly difficult sport to try the Moneyball approach with because it's largely a battle of team cohesion rather than individual skills, and even apparently novel and meaningful heuristics one might devise like "percentage of forward passes completed in opposition half over the course of a season" are likely to be heavily influenced by the tactical approach of the player's team. Even if your telemetry data is incredibly comprehensive, it's going to be difficult to teach a computer the difference between chances created because the timing of the pass was exquisite and chances succeeded because the covering defenders were out of position or made a glaring hash of the interception; not something you'll ever find coaches or commentators struggling to decide on.
http://www.optasportspro.com/about/optapro-blog/posts/2015/b...
"StatDNA’s database is now Arsenal’s database, so if Wenger wants to sign a defender, who is, say, 6ft 4in, an excellent reader of the game and an accurate passer, one push of a button will bring up the best options in world football."
Interesting and Arsenal need a few.
also, i don't believe that a system like this one is new. i can't find the source, but sometime ago i read SAP's owner (founder?) had a system much like this one built for the german national team.
between per, kos, gabriel and chambers, arsenal has a good number of defenders. the three main guys (per, kos and gabriel) are interchangeable and play quite well with each other.
now, arsenal 100% needs a defensive midfielder. only coquelin is not enough (arteta and flamini are not good enough).