Latest Takeover Rumour. The Moores / Noell one

[ijjysmith]

Moneyball ...why the hell are peeps talking about it...

It's a Baseball thing mate.

Basically a team (Oakland Athletics...but crap and poor like Everton) changed their entire approach to the game using stats rather than star players and the like and went on a massive like 18 game winning steak or something.

Then they went crap again.

There's a great movie with Brad Pitt all about it pal. Watch it. It's good.

 

[Goodison87]

Money ball, strangely sounds like a bond movie... Are the yanks in L4 yet???

 

[SerenityNigh]

Moneyball won't work in European football.

It's not an issue of finances. It's an issue of statistics. The statistical revolution of sabermetrics was 'open-source' as it were. We got to see new, better ways to evaluate talent. And the earliest adopter of this (the A's) saw some benefits from utilizing statistics that correlate more closely with success than the traditional model.

Moneyball cannot work without a leap in statistical (or other) player evaluation techniques, allowing a team or teams to gain a (temporary) advantage over other teams in the signing of underrated players.

Advanced statistics in european football have two problems:
1) It's much harder to identify good statistics in flowing team sports, especially ones with 11 players that interchange and not a lot of traditional counting statistics
2) They probably already have done this, and the statistics are the proprietary property of each club that creates a new one. If not, they should.
3) Adjusting for league is not the easiest thing to do (look at the hit-miss nature of European NBA players).

The key to Moneyball is identifying a clear gap in the market and then exploiting it until everyone else catches on (leading to the richest clubs winning again). Football has A LOT more teams, coaches, fans, clubs, etc. There are less gaps in the markets. Moneyball is a moment in time.

Moneyball is about information. Baseball is flooded with data, so it's literally gathering the low-hanging fruit. I have trouble thinking that there is no market ignorance/information efficiencies to be gained in football when just 2 years ago I watched a Moyes' United side lob 89 crosses into the box.

 

[Woolly Blue]

When american owners took over the rs they replaced their scouting and transfer system with a new one based on the moneyball system used in baseball.

Their was debate on whether our new american owners would want to do the same thing.

You'd imagine they wouldn't as we, unlike liverpool, actually have a competant scouting and transfer system already but it's stirred up a decent debate anyway.

Too tenous.
The debate's fine, but it's in the wrong place. Ale House or World Footie ...

 

[SerenityNigh]

Not sure I can explain it any more clearly, and this does risk getting off-topic, but: Let's say you run Aston Villa, an NBA team. A sound "Moneyball" - ie analytics-based -strategy would be to sell the entire first team (since there is no relegation) and replace them with, why not, the Havant and Waterlooville first 11. This increases your odds of being arbitrarily assigned Ross Barkley, who doesn't have the legal right to play for another side for at least half a decade, and who you are legally entitled to pay around 10% of the market rate. You don't have to scout Gerard Deulofeu, or Seamus Coleman, or Brendan Galloway, and then put in a competitive offer for them - you just try to perform even more ineptly and they'll be assigned to you. You don't have to worry about, say, stadium expenses, because if Birmingham won't pay you, you can move and become Surrey or Shoreditch Villa - or you might just go there anyways because the North under the Tories doesn't make you wealthy enough. There is no shortage of teams who take this approach, and they are praised for using "analytic" or "Moneyball" methods.

Is it so difficult to see why the assumptions behind this approach don't necessarily translate in the rest of the world? Why owners accustomed to this system might make poor decisions elsewhere?

The cognitive dissonance in extolling the "free market" but embracing this model is interesting, but best left for the Ale House.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of this entire conversation.

cf Clippers, all but the last three years; 76-ers, last three years

 

[abelard]

Moneyball is about information. Baseball is flooded with data, so it's literally gathering the low-hanging fruit. I have trouble thinking that there is no market ignorance/information efficiencies to be gained in football when just 2 years ago I watched a Moyes' United side lob 89 crosses into the box.

To each his own, but lobbing 89 crosses into the box seems like exactly the sort of thing that somebody's algorithm would suggest (17.6% more likely to create chances than regular build-up play!)

 

[SerenityNigh]

Can we give Moneyball a rest and stick to the topic lads ?


I'm mainly saying this because I havn't a clue what Moneyball is, so if someone can show how it's directly relevant to the rumoured takeover then I'll creep quietly away.

It sounds vaguely interesting I suppose, so feel free to start a new thread on "Moneyball and it's relevance to English football" or whatever

Soz, will end it

 

[Woolly Blue]

Lads

LADS

LADS

Take the moneyball talk elsewhere. People are logging on to GOT to, among other things, find out what, if anything is happening on the rumoured takeover.

 

[roydo]

the club must continue to exploit weaknesses in the market.

That means scout decent players really.

Pretty sure if we applied Moneyball to signing Andy Gray or Peter Reid we wouldnt have signed them.

Anyrate, new Merican owners. Maybe. Hope not.

 

[Lowste]

Lads

LADS

LADS

Take the moneyball talk elsewhere. People are logging on to GOT to, among other things, find out what, if anything is happening on the rumoured takeover.

Anything happening.....lost the will with this moneyball

 

[mmmmsnouts]

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of this entire conversation.

cf Clippers, all but the last three years; 76-ers, last three years

The word for teams like the 76ers who are crap on purpose to get a lot of high draft picks is "tanking."

 

[Allezfan]

Can we ban roydo for breaking the no more moneyball talk rule?

 

[SerenityNigh]

Anyrate, new Merican owners. Maybe. Hope not.

American owners? I'm in. These? Not yet sure.

 

[roydo]

American owners? I'm in. These? Not yet sure.

Just think/hope there are other options not in the public eye yet.

 

[RaleighBlue]

Moneyball is about information. Baseball is flooded with data, so it's literally gathering the low-hanging fruit. I have trouble thinking that there is no market ignorance/information efficiencies to be gained in football when just 2 years ago I watched a Moyes' United side lob 89 crosses into the box.

I don't disagree that there are no inefficiencies.

I disagree that 'Moneyball' can happen. Moneyball is what happens when revolution dramatically overtakes a closed system. European football is not a closed system, and as such efficiencies are likely to be adopted more incrementally as various teams identify different inefficiencies and compensate for them. By the time the revolution fully occurs, everyone is on the same page, and wealth reigns.