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Soccernomics


alpal78

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Has anyone read the book soccernomics? It's the soccer version of the famous Freakonomics where the authors use stats, data, regression, probabilities...the whole lot to reveal some very interesting facts on football.

 

For instance using tons of data on penalties, it was shown that the highest percentage of scoring a penalty is when the striker blasts the ball down the middle (presumably coz most keepers move to one side early), but data also shows that strikers are not keen on doing this. Reason being that for the striker, if the keeper saves by diving right/left, then credit goes to the keeper (i.e. no blame on the striker), but if the striker shoots down the middle, and the keeper saves by just standing there, then the striker is blamed for a lousy penalty. Interesting case of conflict of personal interest vs team interest.

 

Over the next few days, (weeks if sufficient interest), I wanna to post some of their interesting findings that we can discuss, some interesting staff including the best features of transfer policies (based on analysis of Brian Clough's transfers)

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I read it about a year ago. Makes some interesting points, but you have to look at things through one perspective for them to really make sense. It's hard to explain, but essentially, trying to nail something down to an exact science, when it isn't an exact science is not going to work.

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I read it about a year ago. Makes some interesting points, but you have to look at things through one perspective for them to really make sense. It's hard to explain, but essentially, trying to nail something down to an exact science, when it isn't an exact science is not going to work.

 

Ya of course, but I don't think they pretend that their conclusion are definite, just based on probabilities and they accept that its the randomness in football that makes it difficult to predict but you can still analyze some patterns.

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More commonly known as: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-England-Lose-phenomena-explained/dp/0007354088/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303055040&sr=8-1 over here. Its decent, but some of things it talks about aren't in depth enough at times.

 

Yup that's the one, on Kindle I think its called Soccernomics (at least that's what I have). The bit on England is interesting too showing that given size of population, GDP and football experience, England has actually done better than we should.

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I finished reading this about 2 weeks ago and loved it (for the most part). Actually thought the title chapter of why england lose was the worst bit. Sometimes i found their methods debatable but overall it was a great read.

 

Liked their investigation into how Lyon have became what they have. They have a transfer committee who use the 'wisdom of crowds' to make decisions. Its went pretty well for them!

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It's a fun book.

 

A lot of the analysis is overly simple but the fundamental point that the book is putting forth (why do we just assume that some things are true about football without questioning them? And why are you damn Englishmen so damned scared of statistics? :lol:) are very relevant.

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It's a fun book.

 

A lot of the analysis is overly simple but the fundamental point that the book is putting forth (why do we just assume that some things are true about football without questioning them? And why are you damn Englishmen so damned scared of statistics? :lol:) are very relevant.

 

Nail on the head, it's good light reading. It's not a football bible nor is it trying to be.

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I read it about a year ago. Makes some interesting points, but you have to look at things through one perspective for them to really make sense. It's hard to explain, but essentially, trying to nail something down to an exact science, when it isn't an exact science is not going to work.

 

Ya of course, but I don't think they pretend that their conclusion are definite, just based on probabilities and they accept that its the randomness in football that makes it difficult to predict but you can still analyze some patterns.

 

Thing is though, randomness is at the heart of probability, and proper predictions will never say "Team X will win tonight" but will say "Team X has a 64% chance of winning tonight", so when a referee doesn't give a nailed on pelanty in the 95th minute, the probabilities will still hold true, because that sort of thing will happen X number of times in Y number of matches.

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Guest ObiChrisKenobi

It went off things like population, how much of it watch football, how long they spend watching football on the TV and stuff like that. Been a while since I read the book. The Newcastle Transfer stuff was interesting, but pretty basic.

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Some odd clubs that are represented on the Norwegian Supporter Union for British Football:

 

Aldershot Town FC

Billericay Town

Cheltenham

Exeter City

Macclesfield Town

Rochdale

Torquay United

Woking

Rushden & Diamonds

 

These are official supporter clubs, that run websites and attend supporter cups etc. There are probably several other unofficial ones for more obscure teams than those listed. :lol:

 

Seeing as it's calculated on percentage of population, I can see how Norway topped the list.

 

Edit: 0.0012% of the Norwegian population are Wokin supporters, 0.79% Liverpool, 0.96% Man Utd,  while (paying)Newcastle supporters represent 0.0055%. Still early days for the new Newcastle supporter club though.

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