By David Butler

Soccer & Society, in conjunction with Routledge/Taylor & Francis Online, have published a variety of articles on soccer in Ireland. The special edition addresses economic, historic and social aspects of the soccer. A full list of the articles can be found here.

Robbie and I have made a contribution. Our article entitled Rule changes and incentives in the League of Ireland from 1970 to 2014 offers a broad analysis of the developments in the League of Ireland from the 1970’s onward. In particular it offers a descriptive account of the (many) changes to rules in the League, some of which were quite forward thinking at the time, such as the introduction as a 4-3-2-1 points system trialled in the early eighties. We also describe the evolution of the promotion/relegation system and the switch to Summer Soccer. In light of the changes, we analyse the number of goals scored from 1970-2014.

Changing the rules in the League, in an effort to have a more exciting sport, has made Irish football competitions particularly complex relative to their European counterparts. Despite the many attempts to improve our league through rule changes, the period has seen a general decline in the number of goals scored.

By David Butler

I'm sure Mark Hughes gave a sigh of relief when Joe Allen slammed in a late equaliser against Manchester United last weekend. I was surprised Hughes achieved a point against his former club. I can’t remember him doing too well at Old Trafford in the past.

Fergie’s managerial dynasty spawned a plethora of managers who would later compete against him and Manchester United. Many of these had significant success at United. I often wondered whether there was a psychological barrier when returning ‘home’ with a different club for these managers?  Was it the case that it was easier for Fergie to take on his prodigy at a managerial level. After all he thought them a lot of what they knew.

A manager-by-manger analysis is below. The total points for each manager is noted at the start. The review is only for Premier League games and doesn’t include managers that had a brief spell under Fergie at Aberdeen or Scotland. Nor does it include managers in the post-Fergie period only (Ole Gunnar Solskjaer lost once against Manchester United in the post-Fergie era). In many ways Steve Bruce and Mark Hughes are the two observations worthy of analysis as they have racked up a significant number of matches in the pre and post Fergie Era. 

The Fergie Era Only
Bryan Robson – 5/39 From thirteen matches against Fergie, primarily with Middlesbrough but also with West Brom, Robson’s only took five points from his former manager. He had one famous 2-3 win in December 1998 where Boro held on for dear life at the end. Other than that Robson achieved a 3-3 draw in May 1997 and captured an important late point for West Brom in May 2005 against United which set them up for a heroic last day escape.

Gordon Strachan – 6/48 From sixteen matches, the Scot chalked up only two wins against Manchester United and his old manager. One memorable win happened when he managed Coventry and they beat United 3-2 thanks to a late Darren Huckerby goal in December 1997. The other win came when he managed Southampton. In August of 2003 James Beattie scored an 88-minute winner.  

Paul Ince – 0/3 Ince took on Fergie in one game as Blackburn manager back in October 2008. Blackburn lost 0-2 and Ince was not given the chance to manage the return fixture. He was sacked soon after the defeat.

Roy Keane – 0/6 Roy met Fergie on two occasions as Sunderland boss. He lost both. Sunderland failed to score in either. Keane was sacked just days before the United fixture the following season.

Pre and Post Fergie
Steve Bruce – Against Fergie 4/51, Post Fergie 1/12.  Overall: 5/63
Bruce has taken on United with a range of teams including Birmingham, Sunderland and Hull. Initially his teams found it difficult to even score against United and Fergie. In April 2004 (on Bruce’s fourth attempt) Martin Grainger scored in a 2-1 loss. His first point came in a home 0-0 draw in October 2005. He’s chalked up three other draws against Fergie over the years but never defeated him in the Premier League. Things haven’t gotten much better since Fergie has retired. He’s been defeated three times out of four in the post-Fergie period.

Mark Hughes Against Fergie 6/36, Post Fergie 8/21 Overall: Since Fergie has left, Hughes has come on. Last week’s point made it eight out of twenty-one in the post-Fergie era. He had two notable wins at the Britannia. A 2-1 victory in February 2014 and a 2-0 win last season. During Fergie’s reign things were grim. Apart from this memorable 4-3 win which saw David Bentley score a hatrick in November 2006, Hughes stuttered, picking up the odd draw at home for Blackburn and Fulham. He lost both Manchester Derbies (one in 'Fergie Time') while Manchester City manager.
 
While it's critical to admit Fergie had the beatings of most managers, his disciples above did not do well against him - 21 points out of a possible 183.

By David Butler

No doubt Valon Berisha will become an iconic name in Kosovo after the Red Bull Salzburg midfielder scored in the Balkan territory's first World Cup qualifying match since becoming a FIFA member. At first I was thrilled to see the Kosovans do well but then I started to question whether their arrival will spell qualification trouble from teams like the Republic of Ireland in the years to come. While the Kosovans are currently minnows, naturally they will have motivations to progress. They haven’t had a bad start; Finland were drawn from Pot 5, not Pot 6, and on top of that, it was an away point they achieved in Turku. If my memory serves me right not long after Montengro came on the seen they achieved a draw with Ireland. 

As all European soccer fans know, qualifying for the World Cup in Russia is challenging. Apart from Russia, who qualify automatically as hosts, only thirteen slots in the final tournament are available for European teams. What’s more, the lowest place runner up doesn’t even get into a play-off. As Robbie Butler showed here, us Irish draw an awful lot of matches.

An issue for the European bloc, and perhaps for those that consider tournament design, is the expansion of the qualification stage. While this has happened on a piecemeal basis, the break-up of the USSR and Yugoslavia were particularly relevant. The graph below shows the number of European teams competing in the World Cup qualification round from 1982 to 2016 and the number of slots available (discounting automatic qualification). Approximately 40% of teams qualified from Europe from 1982 to 1990. This has fallen since then. Now under a quarter of the entrants reach the finals. The number of places on offer at the finals has remained relatively constant. 
 
​As a comparison, the second graph shows the same information for South America (CONMEBOL). The number of slots available here has increased over the years. Approximately one third of teams qualified in 1982. By the time Russia 2018 comes along 45% of CONMEBOL entrants will reach the finals.

Yesterday the new FIFA president Gianna Infantino floated the idea of a 40 team World Cup. While there is an obvious quality trade-off here as we all saw from the expanded Euro 2016 Finals, it may provide a greater opportunity for European teams to reach World Cup Finals.

While things don’t often happen instantly in international football, quick changes can come about from time to time. Wales rose from a bottom qualifying seed for the 2014 World Cup to a top seed for 2018. Iceland, and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland, have shown that success on the international stage is possible, even with relatively small populations. 

By David Butler

The transfer of Paul Pobga to Manchester United for an apparent fee of £100 million (€118 million) has been making the headlines over the last few weeks. If it goes ahead it will be another watershed for football – the first £100 million pound player.
​
It has taken 37 seven years to go from the Trevor Francis £1 million move to Nottingham Forest to today’s £100 million figure (although I think technically the Francis move was worth £1.18m). I'm sure the theme of conversations in 1979 was the same as today - 'the game has gone nuts!'. By most accounts Francis didn't live up to the fee, suffering from a recurring injury during his time at Nottingham Forest.

Reading about Manchester United’s impending decision to part with the £100 million reminded me of a nice summary Richard Thaler has in his recent book Misbehaving of findings from the psychology of decision making that supports the idea that early picks in the NFL draft will be overvalued. The general ideas are more or less applicable to high end deals in football where transferred players fail to deliver relative to expectations. Here are four.

People are overconfident in their ability to distinguish between talent. To justify a £100 million fee a player should be extremely talented. Of course, objectively and accurately measuring talent, let alone potential, is very challenging. The stats do show that Pogba generally scores well, but perhaps not well enough to be worthy of the staggering fee. WhoScored.com ranks Pogba tenth in the list of player statistics behind the likes of Riyad Mahrez,  Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Angel Di Maria. The FIFA index, which adopts a 'wisdom of crowds' approach to measuring ability, has Pogba 23rd on their list. He holds the same rating as players such as Kevin De Bruyne, Sergio Busquets and Alexis Sanchez.

People make extreme forecasts. Elite players are statistical outliers. The problem is that those chasing the talent can overestimate the ability of ‘star’ performers. Scouts are perhaps too quick to define elite talent. Players like Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale are extremely rare. Is Pogba in the same bracket as these players who sold for £80m and £85m respectively not so long ago? Naive optimism can be a powerful force. 

Selective Acceptance. There is information embedded in Juventus agreeing to part company with Pogba for this fee. The act of acceptance should provide Manchester United some insights. Naturally, the Old Lady think that Pogba is worth £100m or less. A literature in economics now exists to show that people can overbid in two-party trades, suffering from the winner's curse. A quick glance at the increasingly accurate Transfermarkt.com, suggests that Manchester United would be overpaying by approximately £30m. 

People tend to believe that others think just like them. This is usually labelled the false consensus effect. In a simple sense, when a club nail their colours to the mast and publicly identify their target, it may be the case they think all other clubs share their views. Fearful of competitors, they may be more likely to give into a selling clubs demands. Although betting on the Pogba-Manchester United move is now closed, the threat of Real Madrid entering the race for Pogba's signature (whether realistic or not) may have inflated the fee.   

By David Butler

​The Cork City Marathon took place today. The male winner was Philip Harty with a time of 02.32.58. The female winner was Nollaigh O’Neill with a time of 3.00.40.

As always, Seamus Coffey (UCC) organised our relay team entry.  ‘Random Walk’ finished 93rd out of 689 relay teams (inclusive of youth and mixed gender teams) with a time of 3.40.40 – we were relatively surprised by this! The winning relay time was 2.24.00. Our relay team included contributors to this website; Robbie Butler, John Eakins, Sean O’Connor and Myself (All UCC). Brendan McElroy (UCC) was the fifth member of our team.

From what I’m told this is the best time Random Walk has recorded over the years. The distribution of finishing times for the 2016 relay race is below. 

By David Butler

A reported 42,438 showed up last Friday night in the Aviva Stadium, Dublin to see Ireland in their penultimate friendly before Euro 2016. For a friendly match that’s a decent attendance figure (maybe it’s even better given that the match coincided with Bruce Springsteen attracting an estimated 80,000 to Croke Park).  

Since the Aviva opened in 2010 the average attendance at friendlies has been 31,006*. The average capacity is 60%. For qualification matches, the average attendance is 42,309 with an 82% capacity. There is a standard deviation of about ten and half thousand for both competitive and non-competitive matches. Those stats discount the Nations Cup. The crowd that showed up last Friday night for the friendly match was about the same amount as your average qualification game. Albeit the Dutch would have been an added attraction, about an extra 11,500 arrived to support the Boys in Green. 5,338 more people turned up to support the team when compared to the attendance at our last game in the Aviva before Euro 2012 when we defeated Bosnia 1-0.

The graph below shows the capacity attendance for senior international matches since the Aviva opened its doors in 2010. The green bars measure attendance at competitive matches. The orange bars represent friendlies. The white bars are for the Nations Cup. The opening match against Argentina sold out. Important qualification matches such as the Estonian and Bosnian play-off and our big recent matches against Germany, Scotland and Poland also all had a capacity attendance.

Tomorrow night Ireland will play their final friendly before the Euro’s at Turner’s Cross, Cork. With a reported capacity of 7,385 I suspect a sell-out!  

By David Butler

The graph below describes the composition of the major European football leagues by nationality groupings for the 2015-2016 season.  

A clear picture emerges again. The Premier League has the lowest percentage of domestic (national) footballers and also the (joint) lowest percentage of footballers from outside of the EU (Non EU). As you can see from the graph, the Premier League attracts talent from other EU countries like no other major European league. In particular, the Premier League attracts talent from the surrounding region - the Irish, Scots and Welsh flock to the Premier League and are rarely seen elsewhere. The other major European leagues attract far fewer regional players.

La Liga has the highest percentage of domestic (national) players out of the big 5 this season. Lique 1 attracts the highest percentage of non-EU talent, the majority of which is sourced from Western Africa and South America.

By David Butler

West Ham United have attracted significant media attention this week as they say goodbye to the Boleyn Ground. Next season the Hammers will play their home matches at the Olympic Stadium. This move will significantly increase match day revenues. But will it alter performances on the field? While every stadium move is of course different, resources are usually directed away from investment in the team in light of the move. There may also be a 'settling in' effect as a team and its supporters acclimatise to their new environs (pitches size, etc.)

The chart below shows the finishing position in the English football league for eight clubs that have moved stadium since 2000. The graph plots the finishing position of each club five seasons prior to their move and five seasons after their move. A scale of 1-92 is adopted as many of the clubs have been relegated or promoted. MK Dons and Rotherham United were left out as these were more complex than most other stadium switches. There are limits to representing the data like this; most importantly is the fact that is only possible for teams to finish within a range of positions depending on their division.

Hull City, Brighton and Swansea all reaped the rewards of a stadium move in the short run. They show a steady increase in performance after the move, achieving promotions in the 5 five years after switching to a new stadium. Southampton and Leicester City performances declined after moving stadium - both were relegated in the five year period after moving from The Dell and Filbert Street respectively. As we all know, both of these clubs have bounced back in the longer run. Southampton moved in 2001 and Leicester City moved in 2002.

Arsenal were not outside the top 4 prior to or after their stadium move. Naturally Arsenal  can't finish any higher than first and they have other motivations outside of the English Premier League such as improved performance in European competitions. 

By David Butler,

Last week a photo broke online that showed Jürgen Klopp’s office shelf. In addition to golden gnomes, a squad photo, a dictionary and a beer, Klopp has a copy of Daniel Kahneman’s ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’. Beside this appears to be a copy of ‘Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions’ by Gerd Gigerenzer. Klopp’s choices are interesting. Economics/Psychology books take pride of place over perhaps more traditional Strategy, Leadership and Management books.

One key cognitive bias Kahneman outlines in his book is the planning fallacy. This is our propensity to overestimate the benefits of a project and underestimate its costs. This bias can lead to us naively taking on risky projects. I wonder did Klopp read Thinking, Fast and Slow’ before or after joining Liverpool?

By David Butler

According to Met Éireann, the Irish Meteorological Service, it rains in Ireland approximately 150 days a year along the east and south east coasts, to about 225 days a year in parts of the west of Ireland.  Inclement conditions makes it hard for those living here to exercise outdoors from September to March. Playing surfaces commonly flood in the winter months. Even if the wet conditions don’t stop you, bad weather often makes for more of an unpleasant experience.  I often wonder whether we might be a fitter nation in the summer months owing to our climate?

Now that April has arrived the uptake of one super public health initiative will likely get going again - organised road running. This usually comes in the format of races, usually between 3km and 10km. There seems to be an increase in the frequency of these events over the past decade. Many races serve the function of fundraisers for sporting clubs and often a proportion of the proceeds are given to charity. In Munster these events are usually located in rural areas or suburban towns.  I would guess that the same is probably true for much of the country given the economics of organising these races. Locating a race outside of major urban areas probably ensures lower organisation costs.  The Irish times estimated the cost of holding a race in Dublin some time ago, something which is expensive given the price of road closures and policing.  

The personal costs of taking part in these events are low, the only sporting equipment needed is relatively suitable footwear. The entry fee is approximately €10. Importantly, the races are inclusive, accommodating all runners from serious athletes to amateurs and even children that just want to run for fun. Given the health benefits and positive externalities (a great community spirit materialises), these events may warrant support or subsidies from local councils. 

Below is the number of road roads, fun runs, trail races and mountain races taking place in the counties of Munster between April and August. I gathered these from numerous blogs and websites online. Cork leads the way.  I could find 126 events in total.