​As is customary at this time of year, we will take our summer break and return on the 31th of July.

​We hope all our readers have a very enjoyable summer .

By Daragh O'Leary

Fortunately for me, Cork won the Mick Mackey Cup after defeating Limerick in the Munster Hurling Final last weekend. It’s been seven years since the Rebels last won the competition, but much of the talk concerning the final centred on the penalty shootout which was used to decide the game.

After 70 minutes of regulation time and a further 20 minutes of extra time, Cork and Limerick still couldn’t be separated and so a penalty shootout was used as a tiebreaker because scheduling issues meant a replay wasn’t possible. This was the first time a Munster hurling final ended in penalties, and naturally, some purists of the game have suggested that it wasn’t fair to end the final in such a way. Personally, I can’t get my head around why this “issue” has caused so much drama.

Yes, I understand that ideally the game should be decided in play, but if a replay is not an option and two teams can’t be separated after regulation & extra time, what’s wrong with a penalty shootout? It is a widely used as tiebreaker in multiple sports including hockey, Gaelic football, soccer, and rugby.

A point discussed on Off the Ball in the aftermath of the final was that penalties might be seen by some as a lottery. Again, I struggle with this point of view.

Taking penalties is a part of the game which tests a player’s ability the same way taking 65s or frees do. Teams are free to practice penalties the same way they are other aspects of hurling. No one seems to think Darragh Fitzgibbon’s last second 65 to decide the game in extra time was unfair, so why is using penalties in a shootout to decide the game after extra time unfair?

Some may argue that 65s and frees are a result of open play actions, but so are penalty shootouts. A game only ends in a penalty shootout if the open play actions of the match result in a draw. The economic literature relating to competition can provide some further insight into the fairness of penalties in a competitive context.

A key characteristic of fairness in a competitive context in economics is equality of opportunity (Suttle, 2022). Essentially, this means that all agents involved are taking part in the same competition and are free to take part the same way as each other. This is certainly a feature of the penalty shootout; both teams are asked to execute the same task, abide by the same rules, and achieve the same objective. There is nothing unfair about this.

Some of the commentary surrounding the shootout suggested that it was simply too cruel a way to decide such a contest. This is where I think an important conceptual distinction needs to be made. Losing a penalty shootout is cruel. Supporters and players experience misery after a loss, but the victorious team would experience the exact same misery had they lost – which is fair.

Unfairness in the context of competition is the affording of an unlawful advantage to certain agents that better enables them to compete with their rivals. For example, if the referee allowed Cork to take their penalties closer to the goal than Limerick, that would be unfair.

I wonder is the perceived unfairness surrounding last Saturday’s penalty shootout somewhat attributable to the favourites losing. It could be that the unexpected outcome provided a signal to consumers that the result wasn’t correct because it was not what they thought would happen.

By Robbie Butler

At the end of May, horse racing circles on these islands were thrown into the spotlight when jockey Philip Byrnes was unseated at the final hurdle during a race in Wexford. For those unfamiliar with racing terminology, “unseated” means to fall off the horse without the horse actually falling. It happens in races and is not terribly unusual.

The reason this incident garnered so much attention was the manner in which the jockey fell off Redwood Queen while leading the Wexford Claiming Hurdle. Pictures of the fall are below and a video and discussion of the fall can be viewed here.

​As a side note, the horse is trained by the jockey’s father, Charles, and a claiming race is one in which the horses are all for sale at a specified claiming price until shortly before the race.

On the day, the steward on course initiated a stewards’ inquiry, and no further action was required. Case closed.

The reaction was quick and harsh. Many shouted “foul play.” Betting markets were exposed. The eventual winner was the 1/3 favourite. Redwood Queen had drifted badly on the morning of the race, ending up with odds as long as 13-2. In running, however, the horse was reported to be as short as 1/7 prior to the final fence unseating.

The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board has decided that action is needed and will now review the incident, saying: “We note the position of the raceday stewards following their review of the incident. I can confirm the matter is down for review by an IHRB senior racing official.”

My co-authors and I currently have a working paper that considers such incidents. We find no statistical evidence of non-trying. Judgment of Byrnes’ fall is based on visual cues. Some think it was a deliberate action to fall off, and others do not. Only the jockey knows for sure. In a court of law, one suspects a verdict of “not guilty” would be returned, as enough doubt remains. Whether the IHRB thinks the same remains to be seen.

By David Butler

Brentford’s Nathan Collins holds the honour of being the only outfield player to perform for all 3420 minutes of the 24/25 EPL season. Due to a host of reasons, in particular  injury, it is very difficult to achieve this feat. In his book How to Win the Premier League: The Inside Story of Football's Data Revolution, Ian Graham outlines how difficult it is to achieve transfer market success; getting new signings on the pitch is a success in and of itself.

Graham suggests the 50% rule for transfers as a (low) benchmark for evaluating signings. Just to consider last season (rather than the two suggested) the paid for new signings in the league (excluding loans, goalkeepers and free transfers) played an average 1287 minutes - ~38% of EPL minutes. The median was ~32%. Only about 1/3rd of the 90 paid transfers inward on Transfermarkt get above the 50% minutes threshold.

There seems to be a little less risk when it comes to buying defensive players. These plyers top the list for minutes – Max Kilman, Nikola Milenković, Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Dara O'Shea and Maxence Lacroix. Again, this is not to say these players performed well, but just that they performed.  

Of course, many players are signed as back-ups and some are youngsters. So just looking at the big money spends there was success stories for Dominic Solanke, Leny Yoro and Pedro Neto. The big transfer failures to achieve minutes include Riccardo Calafiori, Ian Maatsen, Joshua Zirkzee and Igor Thiago.

So which player won the transfer window? Considering only minutes and estimated fee’s its probably Nikola Milenković (he did perform very well too this season). He only cost an estimated 15m and clocked up 3330 minutes. Other candidates include Ismaïla Sarr who also arrived for a similar low fee and played almost 80% of the minutes. 

By Robbie Butler

In the not-too-distant past, the only way to compete in the premier European football competition—the European Cup/Champions League—was to win your domestic league title. The system was effectively closed to all others. I recently addressed this here and how changes to the Europa League may have created a de facto extra place for the big leagues.

The incentives have changed too. Take the Premier League, for example. The easiest route to the Champions League may no longer be via the traditional route—finishing in the top four (or now five)—but rather through a cup competition.

Many of the top teams field weakened sides in the EFL Cup and FA Cup. The EFL Cup, in particular, is notorious for top clubs using second-string lineups, especially in the early rounds. The FA Cup isn't much different. Premier League champions Liverpool were famously knocked out by Plymouth, who were subsequently relegated to the third tier of English football. This was largely due to the team Liverpool fielded, which included fringe players and others who don’t regularly make the league matchday squad.

The success of both Newcastle and Crystal Palace was no doubt aided by some of the bigger clubs not fielding their best elevens in the early rounds of these competitions. Both clubs will care little for this—nor should they—and they will play in the 2025/26 Europa League.

The changed competition structure means they now have a genuine chance of going deep into the tournament. Their main threats are likely to come from domestic rivals like Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. Abroad, Real Betis, Celta Vigo, SC Freiburg, and Roma are probably the key foreign dangers. Beyond that, one would expect Premier League clubs to have the upper hand against most other teams.

Clubs like Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest arguably have a better chance of winning the Europa League than breaking into the top four or five league spots over a 38-game season, especially with the financial and squad depth advantages enjoyed by the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal, and Manchester City. For mid-tier clubs, it simply makes more sense to target cup competitions than to aim for consistency in the league.

Tottenham have shown this strategy to great effect: finishing 17th in the Premier League and winning the Europa League.

By David Butler

Last week’s Europa cup final was plagued with criticism of low quality. Having watched the final, it was clear that Tottenham vs Manchester United was no classic.  

Interestingly, UEFA have actively sought to downgrade the quality of one of their competitions  - the new Europa Cup format does not allow teams to transfer from the Champions League to the Europa League knockout phase. In the past, this valve meant that the elite teams could still feature in the later stages of the Europa Cup if they finished 3rd in their Champions League group. 

This is borne out in the average ELO ranking of quarter finalist clubs over the last ten years. For 9 of the last 10 seasons the average ELO rank of a quarter finalist was higher than this season (in 16-17 it was just below this season). Last season, the average ELO rank was 1827 for quarter finalist clubs. Under the new format, without the exit route from the Champions league, the average ranked dropped to 1731.

It is very often the case that some measure of ‘quality’  in football is statistically correlated with consumer demand – whether that be attendance or viewership via broadcast. With the likelihood that more relatively lower quality teams will reach the final rounds of the Europa cup competition in the years ahead it will be interesting to see if there is a fall off in the appetite to view. Perhaps the competition design will be tweaked to let clubs enter from the Champions league? UEFA may not always be as lucky as having two major international clubs in the final. 

By Daragh O'Leary

Since the establishment of the Premier League, there have only been three seasons in which all the promoted sides were relegated back down to the Championship. The first time this happened was in 1998 and the second and third occasions were in 2024 and 2025. Much of the commentary surrounding the recent inability of promoted sides to survive in the Premier League has concerned the quality gap between the Premier League and the Championship. While there is an element of truth to this, I can’t help but wonder why more people aren’t also giving out about the growing gap between the Championship teams and the Premier League rejects.

Not only does the Premier League now have an issue where promoted teams can’t stay up, once they go down, they can’t stop winning the Championship – Luton Town aside. Four of the previous five Championships have been won by a team that was relegated from the Premier League the season before. The one season where this did not happen was this year when Leeds United, relegated from the Premier League just two seasons ago, won the Championship on goal difference with 100 points.

Can the English pyramid system continue to pride itself on being a testament to meritocracy when a small number of teams have such a stranglehold over both the Championship title and the Premier League relegation zone? Progression to the top tier of English football is currently restricted to a handful of yo-yo teams not good enough to survive at the top, but far too good for the second tier.

A Journal of Global Sport Management paper, Wilson, Ramchandani, and Plumley (2018), attribute this issue of competitive balance in the Championship to the introduction of parachute payments to relegated teams. Parachute payments are financial payouts for relegated clubs to soften the financial blow of relegation, and the significantly lower revenue associated with lower league broadcasting revenue.

While these payments are well intentioned, Wilson et al. (2018) observed that the number and value of parachute payments awarded are associated with reduced competitive balance in the Championship. Parachute payments were also associated with making relegated clubs twice as likely to be promoted to the English Premier League.

These adverse consequences of the parachute payments for relegated clubs provide a brilliant illustration of the difficulties associated with market intervention. Obviously, no one wants to see job losses at clubs which are relegated and incur massive financial losses, so one can understand the appeal of parachute payments. However, this appeal is informed by a bias of focusing on the losses of some without full consideration for the prevention of gains for others.

It’s all well and good to feel sorry for Leicester City going down, but why don’t we feel as bad for Blackburn or West Brom who can’t get up? Loss aversion may play a role in explaining policy decision making in this context. While it may seems a rash suggestion, I can’t help but feel the only solution to this problem is to either remove or significantly reduce parachute payments.

By Robbie Butler

The European Cup in football (now known as the UEFA Champions League) started in the 1955–56 season. The competition was created by UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) to determine the best club team in Europe. The first-ever European Cup match was played between Sporting CP and Partizan Belgrade on 4 September 1955. The match took place at the Estádio Nacional in Lisbon and ended in a 3–3 draw. Sporting’s João Baptista Martins had the honour of scoring the first goal in European Cup history.

The inaugural tournament was won by Real Madrid, who defeated Stade de Reims 4–3 in the final. Real Madrid went on to dominate the early years of the competition, winning the first five editions of the European Cup. The Spanish giants could rightly claim to be the “Champions” of Europe – or Champion of Champions, so to speak.

For more than 40 years, the tournament remained closed to teams other than national champions. Second place in any European league – even the biggest leagues of England, Spain, and Germany – did not qualify, while first place in weaker leagues like Iceland, Wales, or Luxembourg did. It truely was a "'league of champions".

This all changed at the start of the 1997–98 season when UEFA expanded the competition to include league runners-up from stronger footballing nations such as Spain, Italy, Germany, and England. The Champions League was no longer just for “champions.” The motivations were largely economic. More games meant more money from matchday operations, merchandising, and broadcasting. This translated into higher revenues and, most likely, higher profits. Whether these teams were “champions” or not didn’t really matter.

As the years have rolled by, the competition has been expanded further. The most dramatic recent change has been the addition of a 36-team league format. Much of this change was driven by the threat of the so-called European Super League. The UEFA Champions League is now a de facto Super League. The same clubs regularly compete from the top European leagues. And an interesting dynamic has now emerged via the UEFA Europa League.

Until 2024–25, teams finishing 3rd in the Champions League Group Stage would drop into the Europa League after being eliminated from the premier competition. This is no longer the case. Under the old system, the eventual Europa League winners most likely came from one of the top European leagues. The last time a team outside of England, Spain, Germany, or Italy won the Europa League was in 2010–11, when Porto lifted the cup. I was at the game in Dublin. In fact, over the past twenty seasons, only three teams outside of the “big” leagues have won the competition.

There is an important dynamic to this. The Europa League winners began to automatically qualify for the UEFA Champions League starting with the 2015–16 season. The first beneficiaries of this were Sevilla. Since then, it has been used by other clubs in England, Spain, Germany, and Italy. While some might argue this rule increases the prestige of the Europa League and encourages teams to take it more seriously, I see it as creating an additional place for the top leagues.

The 2024–25 rule change goes even further. The Europa League is essentially “closed” from the start, as the 3rd-place route from the Champions League Group Stage no longer exists. The strongest clubs in the competition come from the top leagues. As this season proves – the final will see Manchester United play Tottenham Hotspur – the Europa League will become a de facto extra Champions League place for England or Spain. Italy or Germany might spoil this duopoly from time to time.

The likelihood of a club crowned champions from another European league, arriving from the Champions League that could challenge these clubs is now removed. Therefore, a Porto, Benfica, Monaco, Celtic, Rangers, etc. can no longer threaten the 'big league' clubs and I suspect the Europa League will not leave England, Spain Italy or Germany for sometime.

With the addition of a 5th Champions League spot for some top leagues and the Europa League winners’ spot, England and Spain will effectively have six teams in the Champions League each season on a regular basis. There were to be six English clubs in the proposed European Super League.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

By Daragh O'Leary

Unfortunately for me, Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal are now officially set to go another season without winning a trophy. Arsenal’s FA Cup victory in 2020 was the last major honour the Gunners secured and with their recent 2-1 loss to Paris Saint-Germain, Arteta’s men confirmed that they won’t be able to make the Champions League final in Munich this year. The European Cup was their last hope of collecting a trophy to take the bad look off what has been quite a miserable season.

Despite this, I still find myself a staunch supporter of Mikel Arteta and everything he is doing at the Emirates. Why? I believe in the use of probabilistic modelling in football. Allow me to explain.

Economists, or at least empirical economists, spend a lot of their time trying to deal with issues concerning causality. For example, given the role that technological advancement plays in determining log-run economic growth, a lot of economists study innovation to identify its causes. A firm introducing a new product could be considered an innovation, so many economists have looked to identify what leads to this happening.

Common inputs of innovation include human capital, R&D, and collaborations with external parties. All of these variables positively contribute to the probability that a firm may innovate, but it should be noted that none of these variables are deterministic inputs of innovation. What I mean by this is that they don’t guarantee that innovation will happen, they simply increase the likelihood that it might. A similar approach is taken by football coaches to winning trophies.

When Manchester City won the Champions League Final the deterministic parameters which made this happen were that they scored a goal and Inter Milan didn’t. We know that this is exactly what caused Man City to win not only because when it happened, they won the cup, but had it not happened (i.e., Inter Milan scored and Man City didn’t, Man City wouldn’t have won the cup). Econometricians call this a counterfactual proof. While this explains how Man City won the final, it isn’t all that helpful to coaches as a model for general success – just score and don’t concede!

As good as he is, Pep Guardiola didn’t buy Rodri because he knew that he’d need him to score in the Champions League Final. He bought Rodri because he knew Rodri would be a good player which would increase the overall probability that his team would have the ball when played in a certain way, thereby increasing the number of chances they might create which should maximise the probability of winning a football match.

Unfortunately for Mikel Arteta, and Pep for most his tenure at City and all his time at Bayern Munich, probabilistic modelling doesn’t guarantee a certain outcome. You can have great players, great tactics, create great chances, and still not win. Arsenal managed to create several great chances last night (see graph below) and for the most part they played quite well. 

Had Rice put his header away, Martinelli scored in the box, Ødegaard’s shot not been saved so brilliantly by Donnarumma, or Saka not missed an open goal maybe Arsenal fans would be a lot happier right now.
​
Unfortunately, excellence in sport is fragile and decided by marginal wins. All Arteta can do is continue to set up his team in a way which he believes maximises their chances of winning football matches. Both Pep and Jurgen Klopp took City and Liverpool to 3 Champions League finals each and both only managed to win one of them. Maybe Arteta will come out on the right side of a trophy next season.

By Robbie Butler

In the world of football, stories of glory and collapse often unfold in decades. But in the space of just four years, Wrexham A.F.C. has gone from a forgotten fifth-tier club to a symbol of hope—and Hollywood. At the same time, Luton Town has endured one of the more dramatic recent reversals of fortune. Both clubs are emblematic of the highs and lows of the English football pyramid.

In February 2021, actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney completed the unexpected purchase of Wrexham A.F.C., a small, fan-owned club with a proud but troubled history. The club had been stuck in the National League, the fifth tier of English football, since 2008 after a 2–0 defeat to Hereford United ended their 87-year run in the Football League.

What seemed like a quirky celebrity move soon turned into one of football's most captivating comeback stories.
Backed by serious investment, strong leadership, and an authentic connection with the community, Wrexham achieved what no English professional club had done before: three consecutive promotions. By April 2025, they had reached the EFL Championship (2nd tier)—a remarkable feat by any standard.

Their story became globally recognized thanks to the Emmy-winning documentary series Welcome to Wrexham, which not only chronicled the club’s progress but also spotlighted the people and town that make Wrexham special.

Luton Town’s recent rise (addressed previously here) mirrors Wrexham’s both today (but there has been a subsequent decline). Promoted to the Premier League in 2023/24, Luton’s were relegated after just one year, and despite hopes of bouncing back, they suffered a second straight relegation in 2024/25, landing them in League One.

The juxtaposition couldn’t be more dramatic. In 2023/24, Wrexham were in League Two, and Luton were facing clubs like Liverpool, Manchester City and Arsenal. In 2025/26, Wrexham will play in a higher division than Luton Town—an amazing reversal of fortunes in just two years.

This sharp contrast underscores the unique drama of the English football system. Unlike American sports leagues, where teams are protected by closed systems, European football embraces promotion and relegation

​Reynolds and McElhenney – two US stars – have become poster boys for a system so different from their native sporting culture. They've not only embraced the challenge but thrived within it, experiencing the true elation of earning each step forward.

As for Luton Town, their fall is a reminder of how quickly fortunes can change—and how important it is to build for long-term resilience, not just short-term success. As of May 2025, Wrexham’s journey is one that few could have scripted better—even in Hollywood.