Never thought I'd see an article about Arsenal here.<p>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.<p>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's still lots of great football stats work being done out in the open, at <a href="http://statsbomb.com/" rel="nofollow">http://statsbomb.com/</a> 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.<p>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.
As an Arsenal fan, this somewhat surprises me considering Arsene Wenger seems to be a fairly old fashioned sort of coach <i>these</i> days.<p>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.<p>Guess he still has a few tricks left though.
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): <a href="http://gfycat.com/TotalEmbellishedDesertpupfish" rel="nofollow">http://gfycat.com/TotalEmbellishedDesertpupfish</a><p>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).
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.
<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jul/27/how-fc-midtjylland-analytical-route-champions-league-brentford-matthew-benham" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jul/27/how-fc-midtj...</a>
This is old news. But Wengers still relies a lot on the 'eye' <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jan/30/arsene-wenger-gabriel-paulista-signing" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jan/30/arsene-wenge...</a>
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.
Arsenal news on this page. Wow.<p>"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."<p>Interesting and Arsenal need a few.