It's a long un'. I thank you for your patience.
Ever since Ed Woodward took over the club, it's been clear that the Manchester United football operation has been blunted. I use the word 'blunted', because it wasn't that money hasn't been invested into the team, rather the callousness of it. And one major example where sharp investment was replaced with blunt extravagance is the fact that, while United went around trying to build a Galacticos of our own in the early and mid 2010's, other teams in the premier league latched on to Data Analytics.
Data Science is different from Data Analytics. While Data science is good in providing answers to complicated problems, Data analytics is essentially the study of Big Data and giving you precise trends or insights. You might have heard of Moneyball, the 2011 Brad Pitt movie about a baseball coach who used the study of Big Data to create a historic baseball team in 2002. He bought players whom others considered useless. His own chief scout quit in protest of his actions. But he used a Data Analyst to create a machine with precise cogs. Players who fit the system so perfectly that as a whole they were incredible. So much so, they broke a 96 year old record for most consecutive wins in a season in the American League - 20. Remarkable considering they were odds on to be the worst team in the league. The team was the Oakland Athletics and the coach, Billy Beane.
The Athletics or the A's as their colloquially called, win the American League West title, but sadly do not go on to win it all. In fact they don't even reach the World Series. Still it was a remarkable run and Billy Beane's run impressed one man so much, that he was flown to Boston and chauffeur driven to Fenway Park. A certain John W Henry offered Billy Beane the biggest managerial contract in baseball history. Billy Beane turned the offer down and went on to achieve little despite his breakthrough with Data Analytics. But, the John W Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox and Fenway Sports, used Data Analytics to craft the next Red Sox team. Two years later, in 2004, the Boston Red Sox won their first title in 86 years. The Curse of the Bambino was broken.
A decade later, after Fenway Sports took control of another legacy sporting powerhouse, Liverpool, John Henry worked his magic again after he appointed Jurgen Klopp. Liverpool began a data analytics operation that is now considered one the very best in football. This New York Times article from early 2019 shed some light on how the operation runs. Every metric is considered. Every piece of data is crunched. Historical to annotative to incoming new data. BIG DATA - crunched - accurate information. It goes to prove that Liverpool's relative fitness may not just be because they're lucky with injuries. But because the data showed that these players are largely injury free. All the players fit into filters of what Jurgen Klopp needs from players. He is in constant communication with his data analytics team to build and monitor even current players. Now they are progressing towards a level where they are getting unknown geniuses in the world of data analytics, who had nothing to do with football data analytics, and bringing them into the fold. People like William Spearman. They know what they're on about and it will be interesting to see how Takumi Minamino fares to further test this theory. Though it does prove how Klopp found world beaters in Robertson, Wijnaldum, VVD to name a few.
Now... where is Manchester United in all this you may be wondering. After Leicester have a solid Analytics game, and so does Chelsea. Leicester's recent comeback was not predicted, but the team they have assembled now looks nothing like the one that won in 2016, and this team almost finished top 4. Manchester United currently use transfer database program that is vast and can collect Big Data and present some ideas. We have Data Scientists who do their job well. But we do not have a data analytics team. It is shocking that a club the size of Manchester United missed the boat, in their thrall for signing megastars as Woodward designed to do in the 2010s. Data Analysis is not just influential in recruitment but performance as well, and the way certain teams 'over perform' may shock some, but to those in the know, it's the data talking.
However, there is change in sight. Last year, Manchester United hired Drew Meredith to be our top performance analyst. St Pauli didn't have the tools to implement his level of performance but his work is well recognised. Another encouraging sign is the fact that United have finally decided to build a Data Specialists Wing. This recruitment being led by John Murtough. The man who has led a revolution of our youth department. Interestingly, he is a legacy of one David Moyes. He worked as a sports scientist for Moyes and joined the club around the time Moyes became United boss.
The signs are good, we are moving forward in the right areas. There has been a clear change of path in the way we conduct our footballing business since Jose's departure. But the fact remains that the biggest club in the world is only building it's Data specialist wing in 2020, while sporting teams have been using it for a decade.
Ever since Ed Woodward took over the club, it's been clear that the Manchester United football operation has been blunted. I use the word 'blunted', because it wasn't that money hasn't been invested into the team, rather the callousness of it. And one major example where sharp investment was replaced with blunt extravagance is the fact that, while United went around trying to build a Galacticos of our own in the early and mid 2010's, other teams in the premier league latched on to Data Analytics.
Data Science is different from Data Analytics. While Data science is good in providing answers to complicated problems, Data analytics is essentially the study of Big Data and giving you precise trends or insights. You might have heard of Moneyball, the 2011 Brad Pitt movie about a baseball coach who used the study of Big Data to create a historic baseball team in 2002. He bought players whom others considered useless. His own chief scout quit in protest of his actions. But he used a Data Analyst to create a machine with precise cogs. Players who fit the system so perfectly that as a whole they were incredible. So much so, they broke a 96 year old record for most consecutive wins in a season in the American League - 20. Remarkable considering they were odds on to be the worst team in the league. The team was the Oakland Athletics and the coach, Billy Beane.
The Athletics or the A's as their colloquially called, win the American League West title, but sadly do not go on to win it all. In fact they don't even reach the World Series. Still it was a remarkable run and Billy Beane's run impressed one man so much, that he was flown to Boston and chauffeur driven to Fenway Park. A certain John W Henry offered Billy Beane the biggest managerial contract in baseball history. Billy Beane turned the offer down and went on to achieve little despite his breakthrough with Data Analytics. But, the John W Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox and Fenway Sports, used Data Analytics to craft the next Red Sox team. Two years later, in 2004, the Boston Red Sox won their first title in 86 years. The Curse of the Bambino was broken.
A decade later, after Fenway Sports took control of another legacy sporting powerhouse, Liverpool, John Henry worked his magic again after he appointed Jurgen Klopp. Liverpool began a data analytics operation that is now considered one the very best in football. This New York Times article from early 2019 shed some light on how the operation runs. Every metric is considered. Every piece of data is crunched. Historical to annotative to incoming new data. BIG DATA - crunched - accurate information. It goes to prove that Liverpool's relative fitness may not just be because they're lucky with injuries. But because the data showed that these players are largely injury free. All the players fit into filters of what Jurgen Klopp needs from players. He is in constant communication with his data analytics team to build and monitor even current players. Now they are progressing towards a level where they are getting unknown geniuses in the world of data analytics, who had nothing to do with football data analytics, and bringing them into the fold. People like William Spearman. They know what they're on about and it will be interesting to see how Takumi Minamino fares to further test this theory. Though it does prove how Klopp found world beaters in Robertson, Wijnaldum, VVD to name a few.
Now... where is Manchester United in all this you may be wondering. After Leicester have a solid Analytics game, and so does Chelsea. Leicester's recent comeback was not predicted, but the team they have assembled now looks nothing like the one that won in 2016, and this team almost finished top 4. Manchester United currently use transfer database program that is vast and can collect Big Data and present some ideas. We have Data Scientists who do their job well. But we do not have a data analytics team. It is shocking that a club the size of Manchester United missed the boat, in their thrall for signing megastars as Woodward designed to do in the 2010s. Data Analysis is not just influential in recruitment but performance as well, and the way certain teams 'over perform' may shock some, but to those in the know, it's the data talking.
However, there is change in sight. Last year, Manchester United hired Drew Meredith to be our top performance analyst. St Pauli didn't have the tools to implement his level of performance but his work is well recognised. Another encouraging sign is the fact that United have finally decided to build a Data Specialists Wing. This recruitment being led by John Murtough. The man who has led a revolution of our youth department. Interestingly, he is a legacy of one David Moyes. He worked as a sports scientist for Moyes and joined the club around the time Moyes became United boss.
The signs are good, we are moving forward in the right areas. There has been a clear change of path in the way we conduct our footballing business since Jose's departure. But the fact remains that the biggest club in the world is only building it's Data specialist wing in 2020, while sporting teams have been using it for a decade.
Last edited: