Professor Bill Gerrard (Business and Sports Analytics Unit at Leeds University Business School) will be presenting in Room AL2.15 (Aras na Laoi) at 12 noon on Wednesday 22nd of April 2015.

This presentation is titled “From Analysis to Analytics: An Action Case Study of Evidence-Based Practice in Elite Team Sports”.

Professor Gerrard has worked with a number of elite sports teams around the world. He currently acts as technical analyst for Saracens in the Aviva Premiership (rugby union) as well as providing statistical analysis to support Sky Sports coverage of Super League (rugby league). He has worked with Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics in Major League Baseball, whose application of sports analytics has been the subject of the Hollywood film and best-selling book, Moneyball. Professor Gerrard is also on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Sports Economics. 

By Stephen Brosnan

In a previous post, which can be found here, I discussed whether England’s strikers were selected based on form or reputation. While discussing the findings I noticed that all of the strikers selected by Roy Hodgson for the upcoming Euro qualifiers were on the books at Champions League chasing clubs. This got me wondering about the significance of a players club when being selected for international duty and specifically whether playing for clubs lower down the Premier League table hampers a players chances of selection for internationals.

Data from fantasypremierleague.com has been utilised to compare the number of players selected from each club by Roy Hodgson against the best performing players in Fantasy Premier League over the course of the season. Figure 1 shows the number of players selected from each club by England for the qualifier against Lithuania and friendly versus Italy. Three clubs have four players in the current England squad, Manchester united, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspurs followed by Arsenal and Everton with three players each in the squad. Before the injury to Fraser Forster Southampton had two representatives along with Manchester City. Aston Villa and Chelsea make up the rest of the clubs represented with one player from each team included. Out of the nine teams which are represented in the England squad, eight finished in the top eight in the Premier League last season with only Aston Villa finishing outside the Premier Leagues top 10. 

According to players overall points, Liverpool are still the most represented team in the England squad with 4 representatives. Manchester United and Spurs both fall from four representatives in the current squad to just one based on overall points, with Wayne Rooney and Harry Kane scoring enough points for inclusion. Overall, 14 clubs are represented in Figure 2, five more than in the actual England squad.

When players are selected by overall points throughout the season players from clubs down the lower end of the table emerge as optimum picks. West Brom and Crystal Palace who do not have any players featuring in the current England squad each have two players included when the squad is selected according to overall points with Saido Berinho, Jolean Lescott, Scott Dann and Jason Puncheon all performing better than other English players in the same positions. Players from clubs such as QPR (Charlie Austin), Burnley (Kieron Trippier), West Ham (Stuart Downing) and Newcastle (Jack Colbeck) are also included when the squad is selected according to players overall points.

None of Arsenal’s three inclusions in the England squad (Theo Walcott, Kieron Gibbs, Danny Welbeck) would be included in a squad based on overall score while Manchester United’s Phil Jones, Chris Smalling and Michael Carrick also miss out.

It is evident that the England is squad is made up of players playing for the top teams in England. According to the data, players plying their trade outside of the Premier Leagues top clubs may find it very difficult to break into the England squad. The question remains whether Jolean Lescott would still be in the squad had he stayed sitting on Manchester City’s bench or whether Theo Walcott would still be an England regular if he had been sitting on Crystal Palace’s bench as opposed to Arsenal’s. It seems likely that the fastest way for young, up and coming English players, such as Danny Ings and Saido Berinho, to break into the England squad may be to hand in a transfer request and hope the Premier Leagues big boys come calling rather than putting the head down and improving their performances at their current clubs.

Stephan Brosnan is a research assistant working in the Department of Economics at University College Cork.

*For the 2007 LoI season an Independent Assessment Group established by the Football Association of Ireland determined which clubs would enter the Premier League and First Division. Although there was a playoff in the 2006 season, which Dundalk F.C won, the club was not selected to enter the 2007 Premier League. Thus, despite the play-off occurring in 2006, the result had no bearing on the teams  in the Premier Division for subsequent year.

**Years where an odd number of teams competed in the LoI meant that a team did not complete the season after they were accepted to enter.  In 2001-2002 St. Francis withdrew from the first division before the start of the season. In 2006 Dublin City disbanded during the season for financial reasons and there results were erased. In 2011 Drogheda United were reinstated to the Premier League, despite that they were relegated the previous year, as Sporting Fingal withdrew from the League in February 2010.  In June 2012 Monaghan United withdrew and their results were erased. As was the case with Dublin City, the withdrawal was associated with financial difficulties. These represent unique cases as previously teams that withdrew before the start of the season may have been replaced, as was the case for the 1996-1997 first division that saw St.James Gate F.C replaced by St. Francis F.C before the league commenced.

By Robbie Butler

Chapter 6 of Kuper and Syzmanski’s wonderful Soccernomics provides a great insight into the penalty kick. Entitled The Economist’s Fear of the Penalty Kick, the authors' relay a wonderful story from Argentina called the “Longest Penalty Kick Ever”. 

A game in Argentina was abandoned with moments to go when a player, upset that his team had conceded a penalty, decided to punch the referee. The league’s governing body ordered that the remaining time in the game (less than half a minute) be played the following weekend. The kicker and goalkeeper therefore had nearly a week to think about an upcoming penalty kick. In the days prior to the penalty, Kuper and Syzmanski’s write that the goalkeeper facing the kick had the following conversation with the club president and a third party: 

Goalkeeper: “Constante kicks to the right.”
President: “Always”. 
Goalkeeper: “But he’s knows that I know.”
President: “Then were f****d”. 
Goalkeeper: “Yeah, but I know that he knows.”
Third Party: “Then dive to the left and be ready”. 
Goalkeeper: “No. He knows that I know that he knows.”

Last week, German referee Marija Kurtes provided us with an almost identical example. During a European Under-19 Championship game between England and Norway, Kurtes disallowed England defender Leah Williamson's goal from the penalty spot due to encroachment by England players. Instead of allowing the penalty to be retaken (the correct decision), the referee awarded a free-kick to Norway. 

The Football Association (of England) appealed the result and the UEFA Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body ordered the remaining three minutes of injury time should be replayed with both teams as they were before the penalty was taken. Interestingly, to overcome the problems mentioned in the story from Argentina, England were permitted to change their kicker if they so wished. 

So a penalty that was taken on a Saturday would be retaken five days later on Thursday night.

To be fair to Williamson, she stood up again. Same side, same result.  The England international told BBC Sport afterward "I went for a sleep. There was nothing else to do. I was pacing around last night, so I didn't want to do that again". 

Nerves of steel. 

By David Butler

Some weeks back it was announced that Tottenham Hotspur Football Club were free to build a new stadium after Archway Steel, a local business, dropped its legal challenge against the club.  The sheet metal manufacturing firm has been in an on-running legal dispute over the redevelopment plans at White Hart Lane. Recently the High Court in England rejected a challenge by Archway Steel over a compulsory land purchase granted to Tottenham. Archway Steel then dropped its legal action and entered negotiations with Tottenham.  On the 31st of March Tottenham reached a private deal with Archway Steel.

This is interesting in light of the Coase Theorem. In his famous 1960 article, The Problem of Social Cost, Chicago Economist Ronald Coase provided us with a means to understand an interaction like this.  While Coase is credited with this theorem, he didn’t name it and it is not really a theorem per se. The idea can be traced to Adam Smith and a standard bargaining solution in Economics was formalised by John Nash in 1950. In a nutshell what Coase did was make the crucial connection between institutions, transaction costs, and neoclassical theory.

Coase implied that if there was well defined property rights between two parties, such as Tottenham and Archway Steel, and that both could bargain without cost, then the private market would solve the problem. Even though an externality exists (Tottenham imposing costs on a private business) both parties have a shared interest in finding a solution.

The first half of Coase’s 1960 paper suggests that in these incidents resources will be allocated efficiently if negotiations take place, meaning that they cannot be rearranged in another way to make anybody better off while not harming others. He implied that this will happen regardless which side the law is on. Simply put, everyone has their price – Tottenham can pay Archway Steel to keep quiet or Archway Steel can pay to Tottenham to halt their plans. The structure of the law only determines the division of the value. If we take all of our standard assumptions regarding how individuals make choices and how markets operate, bargaining can actually solve the problems - no third party is required.  

Of course, Coase then went on to show the essential irrelevance of his argument given that markets are not frictionless and transaction costs associated with bargaining are pervasive.  As Professor Steven Medema, an expert in the work of Ronald Coase puts it, the theorem is a ‘logical fiction’ - it is purely intuitive, not amenable to mathematical proof but is logically sound.

Our initial reaction to the Tottenham vs. Archway case is often to look toward the law to see who has the rights. Cases such as this can often be framed as the 'poor little guy'. Thinking about the problem through the Coase theorem gives us an alternative way to reason and shows us how externalities are reciprocal – if Tottenham were prevented from building their new stadium, their utility sure would be diminished too.

Usually the Coase theorem allows us think about world that doesn't exist but in the Tottenham vs Archway case we have a neat real life event to think about the theorem (that's pretty similar to the examples used in the textbooks). For more of this on a similar theme, John Considine recently spoke about  the Chicago School of Economics and Chelsea.

By David Butler

In March I presented data on the distribution of date of births for the latest U-19 and U-21 Irish international squads.  For both squads most of the selected players were born in the first quarter of the selection year (January-March). Relative Age effects often call into question the selection of elite talent and how players are developed.

Recently, a new Football Association of Ireland (FAI) player development plan was brought to my attention. The document can be accessed here. In light of what Ruud Dokter, the High Performance Director of the FAI, calls a “huge appetite for change right across the country”, ten recommendations have been proposed for underage soccer. 

These recommendations include the implementation of a player-focused model based on enjoyment and skill development to reduce the emphasis on winning at all costs, a restructuring of playing environments in line with different ages and to increase coaching education.  These are progressive measures.  Roll on/off substitutes, minimum playing time and the movement to an 11 v 11 match only at U-14 will hopefully afford greater practice time for children learning the sport.

I think the most interesting  recommendation is number 10 “to Create continuity of football by shifting to a one season calendar: March – November”. This is due to commence in September 2016. This will mean that underage (and perhaps Junior?) soccer will shift to the ‘Summer Soccer’ model and be consistent with the League of Ireland.  The benefits of this shift are outlined but there is still one glaring issue – kids may have to choose between playing Gaelic Games or Soccer.

In his programme notes for the Ireland vs. Poland Euro 2016 qualifier John Delaney, Chief Executive of the FAI, raises a similar point to Ruud Dokter relating to the need for change and collective responsibility regarding the development of elite talent. He also singles out recommendation 10 and notes that implementing it will be subject to further debate. It will be interesting to see the impact of this policy and especially to see how recommendation number 10 works out.