By Robbie Butler
I have just finished reading ""How To Win The Premier League" by Ian Graham. The author worked for Liverpool, as Director of Research, and built the first in-house analytics department in the Premier League between 2012 and 2023 when he announced his departure.
The book is superb and will be of interest to many readers of our website, as it mixes data, economics and football for 283 brilliant pages. I read the first 100 pages (part 1) in less than 24 hours, and while the remainder of the book took me a little longer, the early chapters are a master class.
It does help that I have an attachment to the club most spoken about in the book and also grew up in the 1980s where many of the earlier references and stories come from. The book goes onto describe how, Liverpool, used data from 2012 onwards to outmanoeuvre some bigger spending clubs. Reference is also made to Brighton and Brentford for their pioneering efforts at a lower level.
There are great football stories mixed in too. Some that are widely known and others that are not. The early failure of the Liverpool approach (under Brendan Rogers) is compared to the successes under Jurgen Klopp and the development of the analytics model is described in great detail. The data revolution was aided by the huge leap forward in technology and broadcasting capacity that made many of the player tracking measures possible.
A thoroughly enjoyable read and one I can strong recommend.
I have just finished reading ""How To Win The Premier League" by Ian Graham. The author worked for Liverpool, as Director of Research, and built the first in-house analytics department in the Premier League between 2012 and 2023 when he announced his departure.
The book is superb and will be of interest to many readers of our website, as it mixes data, economics and football for 283 brilliant pages. I read the first 100 pages (part 1) in less than 24 hours, and while the remainder of the book took me a little longer, the early chapters are a master class.
It does help that I have an attachment to the club most spoken about in the book and also grew up in the 1980s where many of the earlier references and stories come from. The book goes onto describe how, Liverpool, used data from 2012 onwards to outmanoeuvre some bigger spending clubs. Reference is also made to Brighton and Brentford for their pioneering efforts at a lower level.
There are great football stories mixed in too. Some that are widely known and others that are not. The early failure of the Liverpool approach (under Brendan Rogers) is compared to the successes under Jurgen Klopp and the development of the analytics model is described in great detail. The data revolution was aided by the huge leap forward in technology and broadcasting capacity that made many of the player tracking measures possible.
A thoroughly enjoyable read and one I can strong recommend.
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