Why it pays to know some nerds in football

And maybe not for the reasons you might think...

The first thing to say is I will try as I might not to use this post to yet again beat the dead horse that is Ed Woodward trying to be jack-of-all-trades at United—

but—

—Liverpool’s acquisition of Red Bull Salzberg’s striker Takumi Minamino, which seems a fait accompli at this stage, is one more nail in the coffin for any rationale in keeping Ed in his current role.

The reason, if rumours are to be believed, is that Liverpool beat Man United to nabbing him, in part because they were aware of his insanely cheap £7.25 million buyout clause. Again, if this is true, it shores up the notion that someone whose role is exclusively dedicated to effective player recruitment might do a better job than someone whose responsibilities run the gamut from the commercial to footballing side.

But because this is Red Bull Salzberg we’re talking about, it got me thinking about another good reason why it pays for clubs to invest in analytics, and not to just stuff dudes in a corner office somewhere so they can spend half a season building a database but actually get these guys in the big boy meetings.

Nerds of a feather…

Let’s suppose for a moment you’re a normal top-flight club with strong revenues, a decent hierarchy in place, with a clear divide between the football and business sides of the operation, and relatively open-minded and competent people filling all the front office roles.

You could pursue a recruitment strategy that entails throwing your financial weight behind getting the more self-evident players in the limited European pool to build some sort of ‘super club.’ This approach has largely died out in the modern game, of course.

Or, you could go with a much riskier, prospect driven strategy of using data analytics to ID and acquire lesser-known players with huge upside, and maybe loan them out en masse before you integrate them into the first team. We see this in varying forms, but despite the rise of data analytics in the sport, we really haven’t seen this pan out.

What has happened instead is a kind of market equilibrium in which all the same clubs are in competition with the same mid-level kind of player that they all know is likely going to turn out great but isn’t a big enough name yet to justify world-record-breaking transfer fees.

Mo Salah is probably the most famous example of this; a ho-hum Chelsea prospect on loan to Serie A, ends up at Roma, goes permanent, and then Liverpool signs him after a very successful season there for a total, including add-ons, estimated then to be £43.9 million.

Now, this was a record-signing for Liverpool, yes, but not because Mo was already some sort of superstar, but because Salah fell into the ideal demographic for almost all competent Premier League clubs. A player who showed tremendous improvement, before their peak playing years, at a fairly decent level. A player, as Klopp said at the time, showed a “perfect mix of experience and potential.”

Most clubs today are buying smarter, yes, but they’re all smart in the same ways, which means you end up with a lot of exciting, young mid-level European prospects going to big clubs for sizeable fees. Players like Takumi Minamino, who was sought after by a number of major European clubs, fit this bill.

So if clubs are essentially paying the same transfer fees for younger, high-upside mid-level prospects they once did for big, older known entities, where then is the remaining edge for savvy teams?

It’s not what you know…

I have no idea what the process was in Liverpool recruiting Minamino, but I highly doubt the answer, as some papers are claiming, is because they club was ‘impressed’ by how he played against them in the Champions League.

I do think it is likely that Michael Edwards or whoever at Liverpool had an edge in understanding Minamino’s affordable release clause. How they knew this, and why Liverpool emerged as the front-runner in signing him—that’s the tantalizing blank that I would love to see filled! Perhaps Ornstein could get on it.

Now, there are some caveats. The track record of big clubs getting strikers in January is decidedly mixed, but this doesn’t feel like a panic buy, but an opportunity. For one, it’s likely to be sealed on January 1st, and it’s not exactly for a record-breaking fee (some estimate the total may be in the 20 mil range).

There is nothing about this signing that doesn’t feel…calculated. Thought out. And this is where I think it pays to have nerds in your front office. Salzburg is a forward-thinking team. This is the side that appointed MLS vet Jesse Marsch as manager and put faith in online tactics savant Rene Maric, now assistant manager at Borussia Moenchengladbach.

Salzburg is also a club that is one of many in Europe built, in part, on the model of upselling promising stars to wealthier clubs. They are invested in player analytics and have a thorough approach to development. This is the kind of team that is most inclined to use data analytics to gain a competitive edge, and also the kind of team that big clubs will increasingly turn to as a source of potential stars.

So this is where you need to ask yourself—is a club like Salzburg going to feel more comfortable working with a team like, say, Manchester United? Where the DoF is also the chief executive? Or are they going to want to deal with a team that speaks their language and has a comprehensive recruitment and analytics team?

I’m saying that the pool of data analysts in Europe isn’t huge and everyone knows everyone else. It pays to have an in, even if it means something as banal as having an understanding of an affordable release clause. And while yes—the chief execs are ultimately the ones signing the cheques and signing off on transfers, there is a lot in the interim before it reaches that stage.

If two teams have two robust recruitment staff with a strong understanding of the upside and the likelihood of a player to turn good, those two clubs have much more incentive to get the ball rolling in a way that meets their mutual interests. They are more likely to be in contact and see eye-to-eye than a big team making grand overtures over a particular player, perhaps through agents, representatives, whatever.

I’m not saying that’s what happened in Liverpool’s case, but it’s at least instructional on demonstrating a future model of player recruitment that is far less adversarial, far more structured, and streamlined to meet the best interests of the teams and player in question. And this framework involves the expertise of data analysts. But I’m an old softy…

I wrote this

If you haven’t already, I wrote a long thing on why Financial Fair Play is working. Because despite all the CAS legal bullshit between big clubs and UEFA, the economic underpinnings of FFP are sound.