By David Butler

According to the Telegraph, Leicester manager Ruud Van Nistelrooy and player Harry Winks have had a major disagreement. The midfielder reportedly turned down a request to stay overnight once a week at the Leicester training ground citing private reasons. 

One interesting aspect of Winks’ personal life may explain his preference for a commute - Marlowe Otilia Winks was born last month. Over the years, there has been many famous cases of paternity interfering in the work life and preparation of footballers. There is a variety of alternative views on how this should be managed and what expectations should be placed on players. They are human and experience the same emotions as all of us, equally they have statutory worker rights. Of course, these workers are extremely highly paid.

In our most recent paper, Robbie and I address the issue of paternity in football. In a nutshell, we find negative short-run performance effects for elite footballer players just prior to, and after, becoming a Dad.  This decline exists for certain measures related to pass and goal creation.  While it seems that the decision to commute or stay was left outside of Winks contract, the manager had a clear preference - perhaps Ruud's nod wasn't as good as a wink. 

Our paper is open access in Kyklos  and can be read here: The Baby Club  



​

By Robbie Butler

​I have written extensively about VAR. I remain opposed to its use in football. I believe it has fundamentally changed the game and the way it is consumed.

Most of us do not know what it is like to consume the game as a professional player. It must be incredible to be part of top football leagues and compete weekly, whilst getting paid. I can only imagine the impact VAR has had on the enjoyment of those playing professionally in the game. This also extends to others professionally employed by the game such as managers, coaches and support staff.

Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou gave a brilliant interview which endorsed what I have been saying for some time. Last week he said: “No doubt, it's not the game I loved… I am falling out of love with the game because I love celebrating goals. I paid a high price for it [against Chelsea]. I'm paying a massive price for it, but I'll make sure I won't do it again."

That is what VAR has done. People have stopped celebrating goals. I could not think of a more fundamental change to consuming the game.

I am guilty of this. I don’t celebrate when my team scores but wait. It is the risk aversion in me. Talk about killing the game.

Because that is what it is. A game! I fear those in charge have lost sight of this. I am not sure whether this is intentional or not, but “drama” is what seems to be important rather than the original concept – deciding which team was best.

When the Sheffield Rules were written in 1858, I imagine nobody in the room could have conceived of VAR. Those rules – or laws as they have become – were not scientific, but guidelines as to how the game should be played. What exists now is a ‘product’ for television, with little interest in the application of common sense.

One really has to wonder how VAR can be used so poorly. This is acutely true of the English Premier League, with poor use ranging from very strange decision-making to actual misapplication of the rules. The Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) put the incident down to "significant human error".

The most recent PGMOL apology came last. Both the match official and VAR failed to issue a red card to Everton’s James Tarkowski for the tackle below. Every pundit, player, manager and ex-referee I have heard from agreed that the tackle constituted serious foul play. This means it should have seen the Everton centre-back’s punishment upgraded, from an original yellow card to a red card via VAR review.

The referee does not have the benefit of a replay – unless told otherwise by the VAR – so when the VAR looked at this, the question is how did he, and he alone, judge this to be not a “clear and obvious error”? Only the VAR, Paul Tierney, can answer this question.

By Robbie Butler

With the Aintree Racing Festival for 2025 about to commence and the Grand National - the most icon of all horse races - set to go to post on Saturday, I thought it timely to revisit a post of mine in 2017. 

As I said in 2017 "I think most people would agree that the performance of sports teams and individuals has improved over time. One need only look at old footage of any sport, team based or individual, to witness how fitness, physique, athleticism, stamina and technique have all improved. This is in no way to dimisnish the greats of the past, who may have achieved the same results, or possibly even better, had they access to the same improvements in technology, coaching, and sports science, etc.

Improvements in individual sports are often easier to spot than team-based ones. This is because there is usually a world record time, distance, weight etc. This way it is easier to compare contestants through time. Remarkably, Jesse Owens' world record from 1936 is 0.04 short of today's Olympic qualifying time of 10.16 seconds."

Horse racing continunes to buck the trend focuing on the data below - the winning time of each race. While there has been a slight improvement on average through time - the trend appears to be downward, there has been effectively no improvement over the past quarter of a century. 

The record time remains that of Mr Frisk - the 1990 winner - winning the 4 mile 2.5 furlong race in 8 minutes 48 seconds. The 2024 winner I Am Maximus took 9 minutes and 24 seconds to complete the course which is now far easier to complete given the reduce fence size and smaller field. 

By David Butler

International careers and the topic of the League of Ireland has received a lot of media attention in Ireland recently. Below shows the data – available from Wikipedia lists of current and recent call-ups – of the number of players selected for international duty who are contracted to clubs in the countries domestic league.

The UEFA average is 17 domestic based players. Note, these numbers would likely be shaded downward if only finalised squads or competitive matches only were considered. 

By Robbie Butler

The 16th (XVI) ESEA Con­fer­ence on Sport Eco­nomics will be held in Innsbruck, Austria from the 27th to 29th August 2025.

The deadline for abstract submission has been extended until the end of March. Those wishing to submit can find more infomation at here.

The key dates are as follows:

• 31 March 2025 – EXTENDED Deadline for abstract submissions
  
• 30 April 2025 – Notification of acceptance 
  
• 31 May – Deadline for registration for presenting authors and PhD workshop (Early Bird)
  
• 1 July 2025– Deadline for the submission of full papers: Best Young Researcher Paper Award (BYRPA)
  
• 25-27 August 2025– PhD workshop
  
• 27-29 August 2025 – ESEA conference (AGM on 28 August)

By David Butler

Following on from my last post, another way to consider the elite standards of the top European leagues is to evaluate the performance of players entering the foremost division from the tier below via the promotion system. I’ve looked at this before for goals but now with better data so it can be considered for more advanced statistics.
​
The graph below charts the output declines of top scorers contracted to promoted clubs upon reaching the top of the football pyramid. The data is at a seasonal level and shows attackers output in the Championship and then for their first season in the elite league from 2017 to present. On average, the leading attackers of promoted clubs have an Expected Goals (xG) rate of 14.8 in the lower tier. This falls to 5.5 at the top level. Their Expected Assists (xA) also fall from on average 6 to 2.4.

It’s not just key goal scoring metrics that highlight the standard change. The decline can also be seen in progressive carries and progressive passes statistics. The significant decline in the number of progressive passes received (blue bar) speaks to football being a team sport. The lead striker for the promoted club is not the only one finding it more challenging at the most elite level.
​
Considering these standard changes is important for promoted clubs designing a strategy to survive at the top and for potential buying clubs watching on. Not all goods are equal. 

By Robbie Butler

“You are not winning any league titles with 10 draws."

These were the words of Sky Sports pundit and former Manchester United Captain Roy Keane on Sunday evening after Arsenal drew against his old team at Old Trafford. Arsenal have now drawn 10 of their 28 league games this season and are 15 points behind leaders Liverpool with just 10 games to play.

Roy is a graduate of this institution and a proud Cork man. In 2002 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Law by the National University of Ireland (NUI). In the years that followed he finished an extremely successful football career, commenced management and enjoyed promotion to the Premier League, before recently becoming a notable pundit. 

Maybe the statement above was tongue-in-cheek but it is inaccurate. In fact, Roy himself played and captained league winning Manchester United teams that suffered more draws. During the 1992/93 season - United and Keane's first title - the team drew 12 games. His league winning team in 1993/94 drew 11 games, while there were 12 draws in 1996/97 on route to title number 4. 

The treble winning side of 1998/99 - often lauded by Keane and others as the benchmark for others at the club - drew 13 league games that season, accumulating just 79 points. This total was less than Leicester's title success in 2015/16, who incidentally drew 12 games. Even the great Arsenal Invincibles of 2003/04 prove Keane wrong. The North London side drew 12 games during their unbeaten season.

You can win the league drawing ten games. Roy has proved this as a player and captain. 

By David Butler
​
Although I’m not sure how they arrived at the order, last week OPTA sports ranked the English Premier League as number one in their men’s league rankings. Bundesliga, Serie A, La Liga and Lique 1 naturally followed  from 2-5, with Serie B in 6. While one can argue about rankings, there is no doubt that playing in these elite leagues over time is arduous and highly competitive. The ‘Big-5’ is the highest level in professional club football and as Jonathan Wilson of the Guardian argued last weekend, through the case of Raheem Stirling, ‘excellence is fragile’. The margins are minuscule at this level.  A small performance drop after a glittering career can quickly spell doom.
​
Clubs and players see this coming. Given the strong economic incentives for players and clubs, the destination for the best aging talent is often Saudi Arabia, China or the USA.  Once upon a time it was Ireland. Moves to Saudi Arabia, China and USA nicely illustrate the standards drop and the intensity of the ‘Big 5’.  The graph below shows the performance in goals of 22 attacking players that have moved to these locations – these include the likes of Messi, Ronaldo,  Drogba, Rooney, Henry, Zlatan, Keane and Benzema. We see a declining trend in average number of goals scored in seasons prior to the move (blue line), followed by a bounce once the player has dropped down the levels (red line). This increases into the second season of the new club and decays as players usually come to the last days of their career. 

By David Butler

​I’m often asked by students about freely available football date…. where all the hard data work is done. I'm posting this as The Club Football Match Data was recently updated and is available here via Kaggle, now from 2000 to 2025.
​
“It offers football match data from 27 countries and 42 leagues worldwide, including some of the best leagues such as the English Premier League, German Bundesliga, and Spanish La Liga. The data spans from the 2000/01 season to the most recent results from the 2024/25 season. The dataset also includes Elo Ratings for the given time period with snapshots of ~500 of the best teams in Europe taken twice a month, on the 1st and 15th.”