Player values vs salaries earned for each EPL club (2018/19)






































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Using Data to Analyse Team Formations

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I recently presented a research paper at the FC Barcelona Sports Analytics Summit on detecting and analysing team formations using tracking data (click here and scroll down to find the paper). I thought it would be nice to publish a shorter version on my blog. The work, which was awarded the "best research paper" prize at the conference, was done in collaboration with Mark Glickman at the Harvard Sports Analytics Lab. Too long? You can take a look at the poster version here , or the cartoon version here . Introduction A vital aspect of a football manager’s job is to select team formations – the spatial configuration of the players on the field. The choice of formation determines player roles, how they interact, and influences the playing style of both teams during a match. Despite their central role in team strategy, descriptions of formations are largely reliant on classifications based on the number of defenders, midfielders and forwards: crude summaries of pla...
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Do we overestimate the impact of recent form?

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Form is one of the most frequently discussed concepts in football. Players, coaches, journalists and pundits routinely refer to the momentum generated by a succession of victories. Form guides are ubiquitous in pre-match reviews, the idea being that recent results are indicative of a team's chances of winning their next match. But is this idea founded in fact? Looking for the impact of form, or momentum, in football is tough. There are a multitude of confounding variables, most notably variations in the quality of opponents, the effects of home advantage, changing team selections and small sample sizes. Situations are not replicable, making it difficult to study whether win probability has been enhanced by a recent run of victories. Nevertheless, there are some simple statistical tests that we perform to try to detect whether form has any impact on outcome of subsequent matches. One test is to look at the frequency with which winning streaks occur. Streaks are a natural f...
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A History of Home Advantage

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Home advantage is a much studied topic, and many people have offered suggestions as to where it originates: the motivational effect of playing in front of your own fans, the comfort of a familiar environment and match day routine, the possible influence of home fans on the referee (something that I want to come back to in a later post), the wearying effect of away team travel, or simply a higher expectation of home team success. It is present in many sports (see here ), in many countries (see here ). In future posts I’d like to take a more detailed look at some of the factors that might contribute to the home advantage effect, but first let’s start with some basic statistics: how big is the home advantage, how does it compare across the top four divisions in England, and how has it varied since the birth of organised football? Home Advantage 101 The table below shows the percentage of games won by the home team, away team and drawn in the last 21 years of the top four divisions...
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