
Arsenal’s ‘secret’ signing: club buys £2m revolutionary data company - xbeta
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/oct/17/arsenal-place-trust-arsene-wenger-army-statdna-data-analysts
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dopamean
Never thought I'd see an article about Arsenal here.

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.

~~~
kspaans
Related question from a non-sports person, about those 'bargain' prices. How
long does it take for a player to become legendary, and when does their price
catch up? Is the contract a bargain because it locks-in the unknown player at
a below-market price even after they become legendary? Or is it a bargain
because the contract lasts a season or two and establishes the player's skill,
after which they have inertia on the team and can be signed at a new market-
rate contract with less bidding-wars that would be the case if they were from
another team?

~~~
kspaans
To expand on that a little with a software analogy, is it a bargain because
they hired a talented intern who graduated into a full-time employee, or is it
a bargain because they hired someone talented from a different country who has
lower salary expectations?

~~~
xbeta
Well, very unlikely you will pay some 30+ aged footballers (except GK) much
higher value regardless of which countries they were from. But for youngsters,
they are full of potential, so a tool to help the club to scout is very
helpful. In the past, they are relying heavily on "scouting agents", and
that's bit of an art than science with data backed.

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thom
There's still lots of great football stats work being done out in the open, at
[http://statsbomb.com/](http://statsbomb.com/) for example. One of the
founders of StatsBomb, Ted Knutson, went on to be hired by Matthew Benham to
do player analytics for his two clubs. There hasn't yet been the sudden land
grab that there was in ice hockey where all the best analytics bloggers got
hired and silenced pretty much overnight, but clubs are getting far better at
this stuff.

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.

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skc
As an Arsenal fan, this somewhat surprises me considering Arsene Wenger seems
to be a fairly old fashioned sort of coach _these_ days.

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.

~~~
xbeta
I disagree (and I am too an Arsenal fan). Wenger always brought in these new
blood who are mostly below the age of 23, and I guess that's the trick he used
to scout them.

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!

~~~
jumpwah
What? Couching is not all scouting... no one's denying that Wenger is always
on the look out for young prospects.

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.

~~~
xbeta
It's sorta weird to chat about Arsenal here...

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.

~~~
jumpwah
If by football philosophy you mean "the thing about Arsenal is...", skc got it
right I think because 15 years ago he was definitely considered 'progressive'
or 'modern'. But now I think he's considered "a stubborn old man" because of a
"lack of a plan B...". (Of course, past few seasons that "lack of plan B"
criticism is not really relevant anymore, but you probably know what I mean.)

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.

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lazyant
This is an example of a good movement by an attacking player (Munir, player
from Barcelona starting at the top) that helps create the goal and still won't
be traditionally credited as anything (didn't score or assist or even touched
the ball in this play):
[http://gfycat.com/TotalEmbellishedDesertpupfish](http://gfycat.com/TotalEmbellishedDesertpupfish)

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).

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niels
The owner of SmartOdds betting company, Matthew Benham is applying his
company's statistical insights to the clubs he owns. This has proven quite
successful. Great to see Arsenal doing the same.
[http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jul/27/how-fc-
midtj...](http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jul/27/how-fc-midtjylland-
analytical-route-champions-league-brentford-matthew-benham)

~~~
notahacker
It has to be said, the article gives remarkably little insight into what
Benham's statistical system actually offers (and of course what was so
objectionable about it to the successful manager who chose to part company
with the club over it). I mean, any football club in the world has access to
data on "any two-footed left-back in the world of a certain standard, aged
22-26, who has not been injured for the previous 18 months"; we had _games_
that could do this pretty reliably in the 1990s.

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.

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simula67
This is old news. But Wengers still relies a lot on the 'eye'
[http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jan/30/arsene-
wenge...](http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jan/30/arsene-wenger-
gabriel-paulista-signing)

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dmolony
This article was published over a year ago.

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xbeta
As sports are now much more data driven, is there any other analytics are
doing similar? In this case of Arsenal, they purchased it for "scouting"
purpose. I would also love to see if some sport clubs can leverage the data
and make sport management as a predictable science.

~~~
petepete
Opta certainly hope so. They have, and licence access to, a colossal amount of
sports data and I imagine clubs that don't have the resources to
generate/collect their own will probably use a service like theirs.

[http://www.optasports.com/](http://www.optasports.com/)

[http://www.optasportspro.com/about/optapro-
blog/posts/2015/b...](http://www.optasportspro.com/about/optapro-
blog/posts/2015/blog-inside-leicester-city/)

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varun640
Arsenal news on this page. Wow.

"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.

~~~
rmvt
i found that quote a bit funny. i was hoping that something like this system
would be far more useful than that. i mean, football manager (the game) has
been used for that purpose for ages now.

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.

~~~
robmcm
Teams have been using game databases for years as a scouting tool:
[http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/everton-signs-football-
man...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/everton-signs-football-manager-
database)

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morganK
Any idea why this come up one year after being published?

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ChrisArchitect
put a date after this title! (2014)

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xbeta
totally my bad! I forgot to check the date. I just happen to stumble upon this
article yesterday!

