Stop bunching

England vs Mexico 2010 World Cup warm up. Leighton Baines lines up at left back with a place in the world cup looking certain after a brilliant season as an attacking left back for Everton. His link up play with Pienaar has seen him create a huge volume of open play chances with 8 assists. In the game he lines up with Gerrard nominally covering the left side of midfield. Very soon it becomes obvious something is wrong, he is making all his normal runs, getting into good attacking positions but the ball isn't coming back to him. When he goes beyond his midfielder he isn't covered. Several times he is caught upfield, several times he faces both the Mexican winger and right back without any defensive cover. England win but Baines is dropped from the World Cup squad with rumours of homesickness given as the excuse. Denied by Baines. Baines was the same player he was at Everton, but the lack of a covering midfielder, passes that didn't come, and free kicks he was down

The job of a football coach, put simply, is to make players better. At my level that is trying to remind them to use their feet not their hands to control the ball. A bit higher up the pyramid it is to "STOP BUNCHING!" and spread out. Higher still and it is positional play. And right at the top it is specific patterns of attacking play with world class players. But at every level we believe the coach is there to make the players better. We can also see that the very best coaches seem to be able to take the highest potential players and make them even better. John Stones and Raheem Sterling both attracted attention for poor decision making early in their careers. I remember an England youth game when Sterling was offside so often that the "no footballing brain" cliche was trotted out. To me the problem was the ball out to him not being played early enough. Now both those players are trusted by Pep Guardiola. Likewise I have seen plenty of amazing dri

In part 1  I looked at what form of analytic data is actually useful for lower league clubs. I concluded that recruitment data was less useful than player and team level data. But I didn't say how they could afford to do so. Or what the starting point for that would be. And this is probably the biggest hurdle. How does a club go from where they are now to a smart club using analytics to inform decisions? There are several options. Listed here from most to least expensive. Investment. Outsourcing. Partnership. Investment means throwing cash at it. Advertise for the positions you want to fill. Recruit and get on with the work. You retain total control and secrecy. However this is an expensive and high risk approach. You are vulnerable to losing staff you have invested in, and with them their knowledge and skills. On the other hand your intellectual property is kept in house. This is how most Premier League clubs operate. Outsourcing is certainly possible. There ar

Football analytics - the process of breaking down events in a football match into data, and using that data to draw conclusions - is becoming increasingly represented in the football media. The much maligned and misunderstood "expected goals" stat now features on Match of the Day, with Sky Sports also featuring Statsbomb data in match previews. There are still people who say "the only statistic that means anything is the final score", they then generally slump back in their chair, arms crossed over their chest and bask in the profound wisdom they have shared, confident there is no plausible comeback. But it is clear that clubs think differently with most large clubs having at least some form of analytics team in place. My interest is how far down the footballing pyramid analytics is actually useful. The argument against the use of analytics, for recruitment in particular, is that even if you identify a potential star you won't be able to sign him. The p