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Goalimpact - LFC Scouting


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If anyone is interested, there is a great, but long article by the guy who wrote Moneyball about the basketball "no stats all-star" which explains why the stats, and the eyes, don't see everything. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html

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An article was posted in ESPN yesterday along similar line in regards to MLB

 

http://www.espn.co.uk/mlb/story/_/id/18683274

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I liked the Battier article, good read, thanks Woolster.

It's worth considering when you look at players who are derided by supporters but seem to be favourites of a manager or multiple managers.

 

Lucas for example has stuck around through 5 (?) Managers now and ehile not always a first team regular has been an important part of the squad.

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There are a lot of problems with those raw counting type stats though, as Cardie mentions. For example:

 

Are they meaningful? eg do they actually correlate with scoring goals, stopping goals and winning games

Are they repeatable? do players repeat it season after season, if so there is a skill to it and can be used to predict the future, if not then its just random noise

Are they affected by team styles and strength? A midfielder for Bournemouth probably has very different stats to a midfielder from West Brom, a defender from Chelsea probably has very different stats to one from Sunderland.

This kind of leads to the next one, have they been adjusted? If you are comparing a defender from Chelsea with one from Sunderland, then possession makes a big difference, the Sundelrand player will have a lot more chance to pad up their stats with tackles headers and clearances, so should the stat be adjusted by possession for instance?

Are they affected by the match situation? The score has a massive effect on some of these stats, so which teams have spent more time losing/winning, or even more time losing/winning than what would be expected of them.

 

Another issue is what happens in an actual game. In the 90 minutes, the ball is actually in play only for around 55 minutes, and for some of that time, neither team has possession of the ball, that means on average, a player is only in possession/control of the ball for around 2 minutes of the match, and that is when they are contributing to those counting stats (of course there are some defensive stats that are counted too, but they won't add much time to this ). 2 minutes for all their passes, their shots, their dribbles. What are they doing for the other 50-53 minutes that the ball is in play, their movement off the ball to take a defender out of position, their pressing to cut out passing lanes, their coverage of the overlapping fullback, their ability to stop the winger crossing the ball in, how well do they combine with team mates, and even their mentality. And what about those minutes when the ball is out of play but they are marking on corners/free kicks etc? Most of those things can't be counted, and a lot of those things we might not even notice because there is a lot going on and we tend to follow the ball when we watch a game, so the eye test also fails.

 

So this model takes a step back and looks at that first question, what is meaningful, and the answer is goals. It essentially looks at the goal difference when that player is on the pitch over their entire (measurable) history and compares to when they are off the pitch, and it compares it to when their team mates are on and off the pitch, and compares to when ex team mates who are now at different teams are on and off the pitch. So the theory is, it picks up those things about a player that aren't counted, it picks up those things that aren't seen, it picks up the intangibles. If a striker scores a lot of goals he seems great, but what if his team concede even more goals when he is on the pitch, then he is actually having a detrimental effect (imagine replacing Firmino in this team with Defoe), and this will account for that.

 

Its not without its issues, for one its really fucking complex. The guy updates this model only monthly because it takes his computer 2-3 weeks running constantly to calculate the scores for all players in world football that he can measure.

 

If anyone is interested, there is a great, but long article by the guy who wrote Moneyball about the basketball "no stats all-star" which explains why the stats, and the eyes, don't see everything. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html

 

For my last point, I'll say its having this knowledge is probably why you've been relegated in Xpert11, and I am safe in midtable mediocrity, despite your lucky late equaliser...

Interesting points...on your last one i will say this. I have been promoted more often than you!....

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