Ray Wilkins on Talk Sport

[aj2k77]

''Moneyball'' stats would say Idrissa Gueye is a fantastic midfielder. My eyes and brain tell me otherwise.

I think Gueye is a decent player.

He's one of those that when he goes elsewhere next season will look a lot better.

Can't pass wind though, poor touch and just as importantly has no heart and gives up very very quickly. Just my opinion but take out 5 or so games at the start of the season and he's looked terrible at £8m from then on.

[The Edge]

Well obviously a good scouting network
is vital if you are to be successful. The moneyball system which is what we are talking about is a totally flawed system. Managers dont just go on stats. It's about blending a bunch of players to form a team. Like Leicester have.

can you explain the moneyball system that you're referring to.  I think your meaning might be different to my understanding.

Ok I'll give it a go. I think what you do is appoint someone like Paddy Reilly to look at all the stats from players everywhere on his computer. Using those stats you ignore what your manager says cos he's a mug and Paddy knows best. Then you bring in a bunch of players to replace the ones you sell at a much cheaper price cos the stats say this is a clever idea. Then you get relegated. Hope that helps.

The manager was a mug and the players brought in by Reilly happen to be a lot better than the useless, feckless Brits favoured by Sherwood.

Why do you hate thinking so much, TE?

Ok I'll try thinking more in future.
I don't think much of TS I think he was tactically useless. I think our player recruitment policy for this season has been a massive success. Replacing players like Benteke and Delph with cheaper sub standard alternatives has worked out just fine. Now I'm going for a lie down because all this thinking is making my brain hurt.

[Monty]

The Benteke replacement was hardly Moneyball. He was replaced, by Sherwood, with Rudy Gestede. Perhaps we could have used more stats than 'he's scored some goals, bruv'.

[aj2k77]

The Benteke replacement was hardly Moneyball. He was replaced, by Sherwood, with Rudy Gestede. Perhaps we could have used more stats than 'he's scored some goals, bruv'.

Who scores headed goals? Looks at stats, Gestede, buy him.

[Monty]

The Benteke replacement was hardly Moneyball. He was replaced, by Sherwood, with Rudy Gestede. Perhaps we could have used more stats than 'he's scored some goals, bruv'.

Who scores headed goals? Looks at stats, Gestede, buy him.

Moneyball for morons, maybe.

The point is that everybody who's any good - EVERYBODY - uses 'stats' in the modern game now for scouting. Everybody. The way you dismiss them as some crazy wacky thing dreamed up in a lab by some fringe maniac scientist is so divorced from the real-world reality of the sport it's frightening. It's like you and The Edge have been cryogenically frozen since 1945.

[pbavfckuwait]

Correct Monty but they also need to do some homework on the characters of the players they are looking to purchase, stats are fine but crosschecks need also to be carried out.

[SheffieldVillain]

The Benteke replacement was hardly Moneyball. He was replaced, by Sherwood, with Rudy Gestede. Perhaps we could have used more stats than 'he's scored some goals, bruv'.

Who scores headed goals? Looks at stats, Gestede, buy him.

Not according to Sherwood. He said he'd been tracking him since he was at Cardiff.

And he still bought him, the tool.

[aj2k77]

Correct Monty but they also need to do some homework on the characters of the players they are looking to purchase, stats are fine but crosschecks need also to be carried out.

Exactly, like actually watching them as well. I cannot believe anyone who watched Gestede for more than a couple of games would come to the conclusion that he could be the spear head of a Premier League forward line.

[aj2k77]

The Benteke replacement was hardly Moneyball. He was replaced, by Sherwood, with Rudy Gestede. Perhaps we could have used more stats than 'he's scored some goals, bruv'.

Who scores headed goals? Looks at stats, Gestede, buy him.

Not according to Sherwood. He said he'd been tracking him since he was at Cardiff.

And he still bought him, the tool.

And I believe that as much as he'd been keeping his eye on Veretout, the bloke he never spoke to once he signed him.

[SheffieldVillain]

Correct Monty but they also need to do some homework on the characters of the players they are looking to purchase, stats are fine but crosschecks need also to be carried out.

This is true - but then we haven't had problems with the characters of any of the foreign players bought last season. It's the British based ones who've been involved in all the problems.

[Monty]

Of course you need to watch them too, but your eyes can deceive you as much as - if not more than - just raw numbers can.

[brian green]

Statistical analysis covers every aspect of a player's worth. Goals, assists, yards run, clean sheets, number of games lost through injury, red cards, yellow cards, number of cigarettes, units of alcohol, motoring offences, domestic disturbances, and so on and so forth.  Multi million pound investments require a total examination of the facts as disclosed by the statistics.  It is essential to avoiding the waste of money on players like Ivo Stas, Jordan Bowery and Libor Kozak.

[Dave]

Correct Monty but they also need to do some homework on the characters of the players they are looking to purchase, stats are fine but crosschecks need also to be carried out.

And for these Moneyball (sic) signings like Traore, Veretout and Amavi, has there been any suggestion that the club didn't do "homework on their character"?

[pbavfckuwait]

Not saying they did not, but to get totally focused on the stats and stats alone that some people think are the only thing worth looking at.
When you bring any player into a club at the level we have been buying there is no such thing as a certainty, did the stats show that once his team are losing Gana has a tendency to drift out of a game and give up, who was responsible for doing the homework of character traits for the likes of Richards, Lescott.
Please dont say well they were Sherwood's buys, because whoever bought them the same amount of homework should be done.

[Villa in Denmark]

The first person in the UK to start looking at this seriously and doing something with the numbers was that utter dinosaur and last bastion of "pwoppa Inglisch football" Sam Allardyce when he took over at Bolton in '99