Moneyball Part 1 - Tony Hibbert

Whenever I read, or write, an article about data scouting, someone, somewhere, will reply "data scouting isn't moneyball". Often this is under an article that doesn't even mention the m word.

There is no getting away from Moneyball.

Any football team that shows any indication of using "stats gurus" or "boffins" or "men with laptops" is said to be using a Moneyball strategy.

Moneyball was a system where data was used to buy undervalued, or sell overvalued, baseball players. The system of analysing data is referred to as sabermetrics.

I'm no expert on baseball, but from my one game watching the Toronto Blue Jays about 15 years ago, I feel confident enough to say it isn't as dynamic a game as football. You don't have 22 players moving about in different directions constantly. The data is easier to collect and far more established.

So the cynicism about Moneyball in football is well founded?

Well, no. The guiding principle must be finding competitive advantage.  This is something that good coaches have always done. The whole point of opposition scouting and player scouting is to find ways of improving your team and exploiting the weaknesses of the opponents.

Data just gives us another way of doing that. But data is just a tool in smart decision making.

So here is where I see unexploited inefficiencies in football. As ever, I am sure there are clubs doing lots of these things already, that I vastly underestimate the skill and competence of a lot of people doing this for a living, and I shouldn't blog about things I know so little about....

Today I'm going to be looking at the types of footballers I feel are undervalued, and how balancing a smattering of these type of players in your squad is a smart strategy. This wouldn't work for Real Madrid or Manchester City, they have the resources to buy whoever they want and throw them on the pile if it fails. This is for clubs with lower budgets who want to be do everything they can to compete.

Defensive fullbacks
My go to example for this is Tony Hibbert. I always maintain that if Tony had started his career at a lower level club he wouldn't have reached the Premier League. There was nothing spectacular about his game. He was a good, solid, defensive right back who could deliver a reasonable cross. And yet he appeared 329 times for an Everton side that finished in the top 8 of the most watched sports league in the world almost every season of his career.
So why was he a success? Because football is a game of balance between defence and attack. By playing one defensive player who could be relied on to stay back Everton could field a far more attacking (and valuable) left back in Leighton Baines.

All rounder midfielders
Bill Shankly liked to say he had 8 men to carry the piano and 3 to play it. Eric Cantona called them "water carriers". These players won't stand out in trials, put them in the creative roles and they will fail, their Youtube highlight reels will be padded with multi-angle replays of that goal they once scored.
Similar in a way to the defensive fullback is the all round midfielder. Whilst the playmakers, the spectacular breaking dribbler and the tackling monster get the plaudits, they simply hang around the centre circle breaking up play and playing the simple passes.
Near the end of their career, this maligned species, will be praised for their intelligence, and history will be rewritten so all those years of "what does he do?" and shouts of "I've seen crabs that move sideways less than you!" will be replaced in the collective memory with a vital cog in the machine only truly appreciated by the sophisticates like us.
When I look at Liverpool's midfield I see a few deluxe examples of the players I'm talking about. A Milner, Henderson, Wjinaldum midfield is top of the league. If you get the blend right between defence and attack your midfield doesn't need to do anything spectacular.

Non-scoring strikers
As Paul Ince would say, repeatedly, his job is to score goals. His job is to score goals. His job....
Obviously we want goals, but what if your striker isn't scoring goals. That would be bad wouldn't it?
What if your non scoring striker is brilliant at holding the ball up and laying it off to midfielders? What if the overall effectiveness of the team is much higher with him in the team than with the player who scores twice as often? What if it is Brian McClair who scored 26 goals in his last 209 Manchester United appearances in which time he won 4 Premier League titles (alongside err Paul Ince)

Players with blocked pathways
No, not medical issues, but the Zolas to the Maradonnas, the Hudson Odois to the Hazards, the Sanchos to the Sanes. Really good players ready to go with an even better player already ahead of them. The stockpiling of talent by rich clubs often sees players who are more than ready to play blocked off by superstars.
But hidden another layer deeper below there might even be a better system. We are talking the Brooks to the Sanchos. The bright academy prospects who slip down the pecking order at the elite clubs when even better yougsters are signed and take their places. The ones released at 16 or 17 when they have outgrown their age group but can't get game time among the 40 other players on the books. They do what David Brooks did and enter trials to find another club. 3 years later and he is a £10m player scoring against Chelsea.


Part 2 is going to look at why clubs should be throwing huge money into their legal departments. Contract lawing your way to the title.