In sports the term “moneyball” refers to using statistics rather than gut instinct when it comes to recruitment and strategy. Recently, football is being moneyballed to a greater and greater extent. My London neighbours Arsenal are ahead of the game when it comes to moneyballing, which shouldn’t come as a big surprise: Manager Arsene Wenger has a degree in economics. Just over a year ago they acquired football statistics company StatDNA and are reportedly both using them for recruitment and strategy (buying Gabriel Paulista and playing Aaron Ramsey in central midfield).
A lot of data is available in football. I recently came across an excellent dashboard with all goals and assists in the current season visualised on the pitch. It can be used to nicely highlight the quality of the Premier League’s top performing player, Mezut Özil. Özil is well on his way on breaking the record for most assists (a pass that leads to a goal) in a season. The season is only half way through and he has 16 assists with the record standing at 20 assists in a season.
Below Özil’s assists can be seen as compared to last season’s champions Chelsea, who haven’t had a worse start to a season since 1978 (see FiveThirtyEight.com’s excellent post on the topic).
Other interesting visualisations include all shots on target this season (left) and all of Jamie Vardie’s goals (right). And yes, Bournmouth scored straight from a corner against Manchester United.
Because of the StatDNA acquisition Arsenal are the only club in the Premier League that gather their own data. Whether Wenger will be Football’s Billy Beane, the real-life protagonist of Moneyball who revolutionised baseball with statistics, remains to be seen. But the club certainly has an edge to their rivals thanks to Wenger’s open mind and forward thinking.