Can Moneyball Work In The Premier League?

[White Noise]

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/blogs/mirror-football-blog/Can-you-win-Premier-League-using-Moneyball-theories-that-have-revolutionised-baseball-and-other-US-sports-Martin-Lipton-investigates-article834666.html



Could Brad Pitt win the Premier League?



By Martin Lipton in Mirror Football Blog

Published 21:00 24/11/11

You don't get too many Premier League managers who look like Brad Pitt, although Jose Mourinho did cool and brooding pretty well.

But as baseball gets the Hollywood treatment with the UK premiere of the film Moneyball, based on the book that detailed how Billy Beane used statistics and analysis rather than gut instincts to turn the Oakland Athletics from nobodies to big players in the MLB, the same principles are starting to be applied in the top flight.

Liverpool owner John W Henry is a strong proponent of the Moneyball concept, believing the success if brought him at baseball's Boston Red Sox can be replicated with the Merseysiders.

In both Boston and Oakland, the traditional means for recruiting players, based on batting averages and old-fashioned hunches, were discarded in favour of more detailed statistical profiles.

Boston's success - winning the World Series twice in four years after their previous title had been in 1918 - only served to reinforce Henry's faith and desire to see the same principles adopted at Anfield.

It helps, too, that Liverpool sporting director Damien Comolli, a friend of Beane's, has long bought into his ideas, which are derived from sabermetrics.

Tottenham's signings of Gareth Bale and Benoit Assou-Ekotto during the Frenchman's spell at White Hart Lane - he also paid £11.6million for Dimitar Berbatov, who was then sold to Manchester United for £31m - are hailed by Comolli as proof the concept can be applied to football.

That in itself is not novel. Indeed, as early as the mid-1970s Ukrainian scientist Anatoly Zelentsov taught Dynamo Kiev's players a series of computer-designed plays and warned against improvising, with the pitch dissected into grids and players moving into "squares" to receive the ball.

While the Dynamo players were often likened to robots, playing with their heads not their hearts, they dominated Soviet football and won the Cup Winners' Cup in 1975 and 1986, while the Soviet squad, selected on scientific analysis from the original 40 names by Zelentsov, reached the European Championship Final in 1988.

Of course, Pitt, who plays Beane in Moneyball, is everything Zelentsov and Kiev were not.

But while Comolli's belief in sabermetrics may not be fully proven, Liverpool's recruitment policy this year was evidence of a change in thinking.

Kenny Dalglish may have had the final say, but the purchases of Jordan Henderson, Charlie Adam, Stewart Downing, Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll, for a combined £92m, fitted the blueprint.

Three of the players were English, although nationality is not the be-all and end-all.

Henderson, Carroll and Suarez were all young and embodied potential, while the £35m spent on securing the Newcastle striker showed that moneyball in a football context does not necessarily mean cheap.

The basic idea is that players are bought at the start of their career, when potential has been noticed and their physical abilities can be seen, or in the later stages, where their experience can be brought in as a priceless added extra.

Players in their prime, between 24 and 29, fall outside the moneyball criteria.

Statistics used include valuing shots on target or cross completion over headline-grabbing numbers of goals scored and assists.

Two managers from very different footballing schools, Sam Allardyce and Arsene Wenger - who uses ProZone statistics to help decide if a player has gone beyond the tipping point of their career - have both been major proponents of science-based analysis, with all top flight clubs now having their own in-house boffins.

The Mirror got together with EA Sports, official player rating index of the Barclays Premier League, to discover the players who would make up the top flight's ideal Moneyball side.

Our XI is well represented at the top of the current table, with four players from Manchester City, three from Spurs and one each from Chelsea, Aston Villa, Newcastle and Norwich, who are represented by former Huddersfield midfielder Anthony Pilkington.

The side, based on their latest transfer values, cost £137m to put together, with free transfers Brad Friedel and Demba Ba the cheapest and £38m Sergio Aguero the most expensive.

It doesn't look a bad side, by any stretch.

And if you don't like it, tell Brad and Angelina...

***

REVEALED: THE MIRROR'S MONEYBALL DREAM TEAM

Goalkeeper:

Brad Friedel

Defenders:

Pricey star – Ashley Cole

Young star in the making - Kyle Walker

Bargain basement – Stephen Warnock

Actual top performer - Joleon Lescott

Midfielders:

Pricey star – Yaya Toure

Young star in the making – Anthony Pilkington

Bargain basement – Rafael van der Vaart (£11million, but still a bargain)

Actual top performer – David Silva

Strikers:

Pricey star - Sergio Aguero

Bargain basement - Demba Ba

[MJG]

Hope to go and see the film this weekend as i suspect it will not  do very well over here and disappear by next weekend. US sports films don't do very well over here, let alone one about baseball.
Any if our yank friends seen it?

[Rambling_Syd_Rumpo]

it did and happened over 20 years ago
a Mathematician contacted the then new manager Graham Taylor when he was at Watford and explained the high percentages of goals coming from corners,set plays and long balls in the box,they played these percentages-it got them in the old 1st Division and to the 1985 FA Cup final-it became the recipe to get out of the lower devisions for years 092.gif

[MJG]

it did and happened over 20 years ago
a Mathematician contacted the then new manager Graham Taylor when he was at Watford and explained the high percentages of goals coming from corners,set plays and long balls in the box,they played these percentages-it got them in the old 1st Division and to the 1985 FA Cup final-it became the recipe to get out of the lower devisions for years 092.gif

Reep & Hughes are the real people behind direct/long ball football and the use of Stats. Horrible way to play football.
The worst team I ever saw play like that was Cambridge Utd managed by John Beck(Ex Fulham) who used all kinds of tricks/plans to get the ball forward. The one I always remember he did was that he had two parts of the advertising boards on each side of the goal painted bright white. The reason being that a player who had the ball could just aim at the either of the white areas and expect any of the four forwards running it that channel.
The trouble is that facts do show that most goals are scored with very little build up by the scoring team. But that does not always tell the whole story and its one of the reasons things like the background to moneyball does not always work in football.

[richie17]

No, and the Reep thing is easily discounted.

What Moneyball will eventually be about is identifying players who don't look special but who help teams to win matches, and in so doing will be undervalued.  This is what the book is about (well worth a read: it's very accessible, which is why it took off, despite covering ideas that have been around - but haven't taken off - since the 70s).

The issue will be, just as it was in baseball, that people in football will feel threatened by it.   In baseball, Bill James *proved* things that would help teams win games, but because he was an outsider and because they'd all played the game, these concepts didn't take.

It took some of JAmes' readers to get to positions of power in baseball to start the ball rolling, in this case Sandy Alderson and (therefore) Billy Beane (PItt's character).  Still there was a backlash, but the big change came when John Henry's team, the Boston Red Sox, used Beane's approach with a big budget and cleaned up. 

Baseball being baseball it's not a sure thing, but the point is that most teams now look at things from a moneyball perspective, at least to some degree. So the old inefficiencies are much harder to find.


We're at year zero in football so I'd expect another few years before any huge breakthroughs.

[richie17]

a good example of an undervalued player would be a youth product. Football is very conservative so would much rather use an established player who hasn't been good for 3 years up front, rather than a young player who hasn't proved himself either way.

The difference is that the established player is on 40k a week and the youngster is on 2k a week.  The important thing is that the difference in performance is not 38k.

So - assuming a minimum level of efficiency - a smart team might say "Hang on, we're paying £40k a week for three players who aren't really doing the job. If we can shift them and use a young player, how much worse off will we be?"

Suppose you can do this with three players who we are sure are overrated.  AJ would be a good example here: to the league he's a name player, he's scored a lot of goals this season (mainly in Euro games) and got a high profile hat-trick.  If you can get rid of his salary and bring in a transfer fee, then find a cheap alternative at not much of a drop off, then you have money to spend on the squad elsewhere.

All of which sounds obvious, but it's about taking an objective view of talent, not letting things like age and experience colour your judgement.  The teams that can do this will have a huge advantage.  It's much easier to measure value in baseball than football but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

[AlFayedsChequebook]

a good example of an undervalued player would be a youth product. Football is very conservative so would much rather use an established player who hasn't been good for 3 years up front, rather than a young player who hasn't proved himself either way.

The difference is that the established player is on 40k a week and the youngster is on 2k a week.  The important thing is that the difference in performance is not 38k.

So - assuming a minimum level of efficiency - a smart team might say "Hang on, we're paying £40k a week for three players who aren't really doing the job. If we can shift them and use a young player, how much worse off will we be?"

Suppose you can do this with three players who we are sure are overrated.  AJ would be a good example here: to the league he's a name player, he's scored a lot of goals this season (mainly in Euro games) and got a high profile hat-trick.  If you can get rid of his salary and bring in a transfer fee, then find a cheap alternative at not much of a drop off, then you have money to spend on the squad elsewhere.

All of which sounds obvious, but it's about taking an objective view of talent, not letting things like age and experience colour your judgement.  The teams that can do this will have a huge advantage.  It's much easier to measure value in baseball than football but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

I would argue that there is one team who follows these principles - Udinese. They buy youth talent, develop, then sell when the price is right. They will never realistically challenge in a long term basis in the league, but they are playing far above their level.

This is the key with moneyball - it is not about winning cheaply, it is about playing above your level using the resources that you have.

Ultimately, nothing ever beats spending lots of money. These teams will always be the most successful. But for teams below the top 6, moneyball is a way to compete to a certain level without breaking the bank.

[richie17]

agree.

But you have more money if you don't waste it.  The difference between Riise and Briggs can't be more than about 3 goals a season: what's the monetary value of that and is this reflected in their wages?  If not, it's a bad choice.  

By making efficient decisions with money you are suddenly able to afford better where it's needed: Pablo Osvaldo might have been a good example here.  (I don't know, just pulling him out of the air).  We wouldn't pay 18m for him, but if we were leaner in other areas (e.g. Briggs over Riise in four positions) then maybe that budget is available.  When Briggs starts demanding full Premiership wages he's flipped somewhere else and you promote the next in line.  For all but a few key stars, individual players have less impact over a season than we think, and are generally much more interchangeable than we imagine.  That being so, it should be possible to keep rotating players through the system, insuring that you're always paying lowish wages to players on the up, while letting your competitors pay the high salaries for players on the downward swing (within reason of course; you can't take this too far or you'll be relegated in a flash! Another difference between US and UK sport).

[RidgeRider]

When I first starting posting on the boards I wondered out loud why and if Prem teams used this approach as I had read the book and watched the A's since I was a small child, given my geographic proximity, and was essentially shouted down that it would never work in football. Good to see more openness to this concept. It makes sense to me but I am no expert.

Good overview Rich.

[finnster01]

It is also assuming that the difference in the quality falls within in a normal distribution. It does not take outliers, fat tails  or Black Swan events into consideration.

In other words, there may be certain players who have a stormer against certain teams or matchups in a season, but lacking in the majority of games over the year (same with howlers). We all know how important specific matches can be at the end of a season to avoid relegation (i.e. often survival of a club). Moneyball will not help you in the Great Escape situations.  092.gif

[Rambling_Syd_Rumpo]

undervalued players??? The Uncle Woy's Europa team is fairly close I think-in some sort of contex,find a system that "nearly men" can make effective,drill it till it's second nature,keep your shape and get stuck in :clap_hands:

[richie17]

When I first starting posting on the boards I wondered out loud why and if Prem teams used this approach as I had read the book and watched the A's since I was a small child, given my geographic proximity, and was essentially shouted down that it would never work in football. Good to see more openness to this concept. It makes sense to me but I am no expert.

Good overview Rich.

and in the past I had noticed a lot of american fans being a bit quick to jump into baseball ideas with football.  The differences are that young baseball players are still known quantities, having at least played in AA/AAA, and that baseball teams can 'afford' to get it wrong (no relegation).  Football teams have to be very careful to preserve their premiership status.  But some clever tinkering around the edges, giving young players more opportunities in low impact situations (e.g if a game's dead, bring on three 18 year olds for half an hour) could be very fruitful in the longer term.  

[finnster01]

undervalued players??? The Uncle Woy's Europa team is fairly close I think-in some sort of contect,find a system that "nearly men" can make effective,drill it till it's second nature,keep your shape and get stuck in :clap_hands:

Excellent point Mr Rambler. It also explains why Roy Hodgson is probably the best manager in the world to save a team in trouble of relegation. He has the track record to prove it. If I was a chairman and my team was in the bottom with a third of the season left, I would pay whatever it takes to get him onboard

[richie17]

undervalued players??? The Uncle Woy's Europa team is fairly close I think-in some sort of contect,find a system that "nearly men" can make effective,drill it till it's second nature,keep your shape and get stuck in :clap_hands:

Excellent point Mr Rambler. It also explains why Roy Hodgson is probably the best manager in the world to save a team in trouble of relegation. He has the track record to prove it. If I was a chairman and my team was in the bottom with a third of the season left, I would pay whatever it takes to get him onboard

it works both ways.  you could argue that Roy (because his system is as important as the players within it) could turn any team into a mid-table side.  This is great for Fulham, WBA, etc, but less so for Liverpool!

Hodgson's system meant that he could take players like Etuhu and Baird who had struggled to make an impact on the Premier League, then with careful coaching and strict instruction, turn them into regular players.

The issue Hodgson had was that he didn't seem prepared to trust players in their early 20s to do these jobs.  This is probably quite key, as the resale value for the players Hodgson improved was still sketchy: had he managed to have the same impact on talented younger players he could've been a money making machine for his employers.

[finnster01]

Fair point Rich, but also give Mr Hodgson credit for getting rid of Bullard and buying and selling Smalling. Quite a bit of clever business on both accounts for a club like Fulham.

But I agree, Hodgson will never be a good manager for a mega-club. He did a fair job for us, and doing all right for West Brom

[richie17]

Fair point Rich, but also give Mr Hodgson credit for getting rid of Bullard and buying and selling Smalling. Quite a bit of clever business on both accounts for a club like Fulham.

But I agree, Hodgson will never be a good manager for a mega-club. He did a fair job for us, and doing all right for West Brom

Yep, I forgot about Smalling.  But I wonder how he'd be getting on were we not in Europe that year.

[cmg]

I enjoyed the book 'Moneyball' but was far from convinced by it.

Apart from taking an instant dislike to Mr Beane, I thought it, in its efforts to portray him as a heroic figure, fell into exactly the kind of trap that Bill James has always sought to highlight and avoid. Whereas he examined statistics dispassionately and critically in order to draw logical conclusions from them (even if those conclusions ran against conventionally accepted 'wisdom') this book is very selective of the facts in order to promote the pro-Beane viewpoint.

One or two examples:
The Oakland As were not a loser franchise transformed by Beane's skills. The 5 post-season appearances (although no WS appearances) of the Beane era represents considerable success, but does not compare favourably with 4 post-seasons (incl 1 WS win and 2 WS loses) of 1988-1992 nor the 5 post seasons (incl 3 WS wins) of 1971-1975. Beane's main achievement was in lowering the wage bill.

The book makes much of Beane's success in selecting Nick Swisher (great name for a hitter) in the amateur draft. However this was largely accomplished because Milwaukee took Prince Fielder, a player Oakland had rejected as too fat. Now Nick Swisher was an excellent and very lucrative choice (now plays for NYY) but, the book does not tell you that Prince Fielder has gone on (despite his unathletic appearance) to become one of the top names in the game.

Jeremy Brown was fat, too, but that did not prevent Beane from identifying him as a prospect for the As. The book makes much of the pursuit and signing of Brown, despite the derision of all the 'experts'. Brown ended up playing in a total of 5 major league games.

If the core idea of 'Moneyball' is the identification and securing of (relatively) cheap young prospects then I guess it can be successfully applied to Premier League football. Jol, and the current Fulham regime seem to be doing something like this right now.

As for the application of statistical analysis (that's what 'sabermetrics' means - SABR  being Bill James' Society for American Baseball Research) I would doubt that it could be as successfully applied to football as it has to baseball. Baseball consists of a series of pitcher v. hitter confrontations with numerically identifiable outcomes - football is much more fluid and inter-dependent. Cricket would seem to be a more suitable subject for deeper statistical analysis.

[richie17]

Lewis picked some questionable examples but was such a good storyteller he got away with it. Sabermetrics has been around a lot longer (as I suspect you know) and Lewis cherry-picked some nice human interest stories to get its concepts across. Bill James had been a very good writer but never 'broken through' like Lewis.  Before moneyball, etc, teams still overvalued rbi, batting average and pitcher wins: that's all changing now and I suspect there are similar 'truisms' liable to be found out in football.  A good starting point is the old English thing about being 'too small'.  Other things, like understanding that a centre-forward can be successful without scoring a single goal, will follow I'm sure.  I agree that it's much harder and that simple stats will always have more 'unknowns', but that doesn't mean football can't be a lot cleverer int he way it operates (ice hockey and basketball have advanced, analysts, for instance).

[RidgeRider]

I enjoyed the book 'Moneyball' but was far from convinced by it.

Apart from taking an instant dislike to Mr Beane, I thought it, in its efforts to portray him as a heroic figure, fell into exactly the kind of trap that Bill James has always sought to highlight and avoid. Whereas he examined statistics dispassionately and critically in order to draw logical conclusions from them (even if those conclusions ran against conventionally accepted 'wisdom') this book is very selective of the facts in order to promote the pro-Beane viewpoint.

One or two examples:
The Oakland As were not a loser franchise transformed by Beane's skills. The 5 post-season appearances (although no WS appearances) of the Beane era represents considerable success, but does not compare favourably with 4 post-seasons (incl 1 WS win and 2 WS loses) of 1988-1992 nor the 5 post seasons (incl 3 WS wins) of 1971-1975. Beane's main achievement was in lowering the wage bill.

The 1971-1975 were no doubt the most successful teams of any, arguably, in the history of the game. Entirely different era, with an entirely different owner. This team was loaded with superstars, most of which were home grown and many left. It was the perfect storm and in no way takes away from the limited budget success that Beane brought to an A's organization that did not spend big and still does not since that time.

Just because he didn't have the same success as the 1971-1975 era teams or the 1988-1992 Sandy Alderson teams, both of which I was fortunate to witness first hand, again doesn't take away from the amazing consistency he enjoyed. The 1988-1992 teams were again built the 'A's way' of amazing scouting that has been in the DNA of the A's organization since they were in Philadelphia with Connie Mack and remains with them today.

Beane was able to do more with less, relative, payroll expenses than any former A's GM, and I would guess of other team in MLB of the modern era (post free agency).

I think he was solely responsible for their not being in the cellar for all those years since 1998 and his willingness to look at things different was exactly why Boston finally won a world series (they used the same methods with more money as did some other teams).

You are correct they were not a loser franchise before Beane, however its irrelevant when you look at their payroll compared to where they were finishing in the league, before everyone caught on to his methods and made signing players more difficult due to his type of players suddenly becoming more expensive.

He deserves the accolades if for no other reason than he actually changed the way GM's starting valuing players thanks to Sabremetrics. He wasn't a genius but he found a tool that worked and got results on the field with managers that were mostly figure heads.

[VicHalomsLovechild]

There's the 80/20 rule in retailing. 80% of your profit is derived from 20% of you stock lines. A company tried it. Found out what were their 20% of top selling lines were and just concentrated on selling those. It didn't work. All that happened was they continued to make 80% of their profit from 20% of their lines.
Would you attract young talent without a few "Stars" in your team. Would that talent know what to do and be able to cope with a bad run? and how would you handle the cross over from young talent ready to sell at a good profit and new young talent ready and waiting in the wings?
No system works 100% of the time. By all means use whatever information is out there just don't be a slave to it.