What is the purpose of analytics?

Five years ago, I was sitting in a café just off the M25, for our first-ever meeting with a potential client.

We had written a speculative piece about how data analytics could help a Championship football club and were about to meet their Head of Recruitment.

We were hired the same day, and MRKT Insights was born.

In the following 5 years we have had some amazing experiences, working closely with some of the best managers and sporting directors. We’ve had the pleasure of seeing players we identified playing in League Two scoring for clients in the Premier League. We’ve enjoyed title wins and promotions, player of the year awards, and huge transfer profits. We’ve had cup finals and amazing European nights.

We’ve also had seasons where nothing seemed to work. Nothing is worse than sitting in a meeting where there are no simple solutions. The team is depleted with injuries, and the pressure is on.  Fan and media pressure is so hard to imagine and leads to a lot of bad decision-making,  but when you are in a room with people who are getting non-stop abuse you understand a lot more.

But what has changed over that time? What have we seen, and are we closer to understanding what analytics can and can’t do?

The biggest change from 2019 to 2024 is the proliferation of data.

Between 2019-2022 most clubs we spoke to did not use data. The clubs who hired us were early adopters, and it was typically that the owner, sporting director, or manager followed us on social media and liked the players we talked about and the way we thought about football.

These clubs had a lot of success, in the early years, where simply having data and using it well was enough, 90% of the clubs we worked with improved their league position. Some massively so, with promotions and title wins.

However, what connected the early clients was that the whole club ethos was based on rational decision-making. We joined a club that was already thinking in the right way and wanted support on a pathway they had already committed to. I’d like to think we helped achieve those goals, and we have maintained good connections with those early clients, often joining them for projects as they have moved up through the leagues.

In 2024 everyone has at least some data available to them.

The competitive advantage in data is lower than in 2019, but it still exists.

It still exists because whilst data availability is far higher, good data usage is not common.

Data is not a panacea

Even good data usage is not a guarantee of success.

Budgets matter, good players always have choices, and competition for players is fierce.

Give me a choice between a £20m League One budget and no data, and a £3m budget and the best data setup in the world and I take the £20m every time. 

However, the tools required to use data well are not expensive.

What do you need?

We can supply all the tools needed to have a really good data setup within a club for a very low price. 

Things don’t need to be complicated. 

Simply put you need:

• To know how you want to play and how that would look in data.
• To know what you want from players in your system and how that would look in data.
• Systems that record how you are playing and where you need to improve.
• Systems that help you easily identify players who could improve your team.
• Systems that gather this information centrally and transparently so good decisions can be made.

You can have more, you can design very complicated systems that merge multiple data sources into a beautiful front end.

I’ve seen lots of such systems that have had a lot of work put into them but eventually, one of two things happen

1. The person who designs it moves on and the system is scrapped as nobody else knows how to maintain or change it.
2. Decision-makers change and the system falls out of use as they bring in the system they had at a previous club.

How do you use it?

The early adopters built data into their clubs from the top down. The owner insisted that was the way they wanted their club run. 

They hired people who valued it, who in turn hired staff who could use data.

They then plugged in data sources.

In later years it was bottom-up. People thought they should have data so they purchased a system, maybe several systems but they got no value from them.

Even when staff used them, and got excited about the possibilities they offered, they weren’t valued by people higher up so they did not influence decisions. 

And without ownership insisting data is used senior staff continued to trust their instincts as they are only being judged on outcomes not process.

“What are the numbers like?”

This bottom-up approach involves data being seen as a separate domain where senior staff ask “What are the numbers like?” and the geeky guy on the laptop mentions a few key stats or puts a scatter graph up on the big screen.

A box is ticked but has minimal impact on decisions and is not embedded in club culture.

A top-down approach is the only way to get alignment around the importance of data-informed decision-making. The best data clubs are run by people who insist on the importance of data and judge by process, not just outcome.

I’ve spoken to owners who believe that data is used, after all, they’ve bought systems, but they leave all football decisions to a sporting director and have no proper oversight into how those decisions are made.

MVP or MID?

We like to concentrate on starting a club towards good use of data by thinking about the MVP.

Not the most valuable player but the minimum viable product.

What do you need to start with?

You don’t need to start with world-class.

As mentioned earlier the key things are:

• To know how you want to play and how that would look in data.
• To know what you want from players in your system and how that would look in data.
• Systems that record how you are playing and where you need to improve.
• Systems that help you easily identify players who could improve your team.
• Systems that gather this information centrally and transparently so good decisions can be made.

This can be condensed even more into “Measure, Improve, Document”

Measure where you currently are.

Work out a way to Improve the situation

Document it (write it down) so you can show the logic of what you are trying to do and look back to learn from it.

You can turn the process into a meeting schedule but all of it is based on having good data usage embedded in the club.

Set out what you want to play like, and how it looks in data.

Game-by-game data (and video) informs the analysts and coaches.

Larger data samples inform the recruitment team and board. 

What happens in the meetings is documented and transparent.

The single question in every meeting is “What do we need to do to improve?”

None of this immediately requires a team of brilliant data scientists and tracking data. 

Marginal gains are marginal. There are much bigger gains to be made from simple data that is well-understood and widely used.

The purpose of analytics is to help clubs make better decisions. We can supply you with everything you need to do this.