Numbers in the Beautiful Game

Our buddies at SoccerBlog.com have been chatting about soccer stats. Now I am a stat guy. I highly recommend Moneyball for anyone interested in why gut instinct in sports can lead to expensive mistakes. Even if you are not a baseball fan, it is an interesting read. (Caveat: if you are not a sports fan, skip it.)

Now my comment to these guys was you need to look at the teams on the edge of relegation to the Second Division, so say Sunderland or Derby County. These teams do not have the money to keep up with Man U or Chelsea or even Everton. When they are looking at players they need to be very smart about who they pick and pay for.

Now, an assist is the last touch before a goal. Statistically, a goal in today's Premiership give an insane advantage. (The leaders in the EPL have only a +3 goal differential or less then a goal a game.) If you can find someone with a knack for putting the ball on the foot of a scorer, he may be worth something to you. In the age of Puskas and Pele, when teams would score 4 or 5 goals, it mattered less.

But the point of Moneyball is that if you can find a stat that no one is paying attention to that does have a real cause and effect on goal scoring, you can find undervalued players that will keep you from relegation and the millions of pounds sterling that costs a team.

And then one commenter "agrees", but concludes "but then again, football players cannot be measured with just statistics, so let's not overdo it." Actually, if you are Sunderland or Derby, you NEED to overdo it.