Comment Central - Times Online - WBLG

Theirry Henry's handball

All the talk about Thierry Henry's handball reminded me of one of my favourite columns of the past few years - Martin Samuel's superb explanation of the real problem with using video technology in football.

It's worth reading even if football isn't really your thing and you are only interested in good column writing.

Is Ronaldo worth £70m?

The future of sport journalism is mathematics.

I have believed this for years, ever since I began my Fink Tank football data column back in 2002. But now, for the first time, other statisticians are joining the game.

The latest contributors are a firm called Frontier Economics who have been using statistical techniques to work out whether Ronaldo is worth the £70 million Real Madrid just paid for him.

Here's their conclusion:

Frontier’s analysis suggests that Ronaldo’s transfer to Real Madrid should have been about £77m (€90m), only £3m (€4m) less than what Real Madrid paid Manchester United. However, Kaká was overpriced – our analysis suggests a value of around £38m (€44m), £18m (€21m) less than was paid.

The analysis can also be used to speculate on the current transfer value of other players. The most expensive player in the analysis is Lionel Messi at £106m (€124m) after a superb season with Barcelona. This high value is partly explained by Messi’s age; had Ronaldo achieved his success at Messi’s age of 21 his transfer value could have been up to £98m (€115m). Steven Gerrard is the most expensive player in the England team at £43m (€51m).

And here's how they describe their method:

Frontier used a statistical technique known as multiple regression analysis to analyse the relationship between players’ characteristics and their value on the Spanish transfer market in recent seasons.

The analysis adjusted for other factors that may have affected transfer values, such as the season when transfer took place and the size of the football clubs involved. This allowed us to predict the current value of players based on their position, age, experience, disciplinary record and recent form.

Our analysis focussed on 244 transfers to the Spanish League over the last four seasons
(2005-06/2008-9). Frontier collected information about each of these transfers from a
Spanish sports newspaper. Information about the quality, age and experience of each of
the footballers involved was collected from a range of sources, including the Liga de
Futbol Profesional of Spain. Indicators of ‘quality’ included goals scored and conceded,
minutes played, calls into the national squad and titles obtained.

Including age, titles and career as a proxy for experience of a footballer we find that
younger players with more international experience command a premium in the market.
Our analysis also suggested that clubs systematically overvalue players who have had an
exceptional season.

Leaves quite a few questions. But the era of data driven football news stories is here.

What proportion of people are buried in football kit?

My favourite fact from this morning's Times is in Richard Morrison's column on the relegation of Newcastle United:

A Tyneside undertaker once told me that a third of all corpses he buried or cremated were kitted out in black-and-white striped football shirts.

I am anxious to hear from anyone who can provide corroborating or contradictory evidence.

Will Burnley be relegated before Labour loses the election?

Alastair Campbell is celebrating Burnley's return to football's top flight. An event well worth celebrating in my view.

As he amusingly relates on his blog, his happiness was not universally shared:

Not everyone was wishing me happy birthday and saying well done Burnley. Like the tweet, clearly from one of my biggest admirers, saying he could not wait to see my face next year when Burnley get relegated and Labour lose the election.

This led me to ponder. Which is more likely - Burnley staying up, or Labour avoiding defeat?

The Fink Tank hasn't run its model on next seasons teams yet, but I have had the advantage of looking at the raw data.

Our model puts Burnley ahead of Sunderland, Birmingham City and Stoke City, and equal to Wolverhampton Wanderers and Hull City. Since (I add this explanatory note in for you, Oliver Kamm) three sides get relegated, there is a good chance that Alastair will not be mourning Burnley's relegation next May.

Appreciably higher, I think, than the chance he will be celebrating Gordon Brown's safe return to Number 10.

Should football managers auction the right to play the first leg away?

Tim Harford has an excellent piece in the FT about how to divide the advantage provided in cricket by winning the coin toss:

The advantage should be auctioned off to whoever is willing to concede the most compensation to the opposition.

The idea is absolutely equitable, intrinsically more exciting than a coin toss, and puts the emphasis on the judgment of the captains. Thankfully, since not all coin tosses are equally important – especially in cricket – the auction price reflects conditions on the day.

Football fans are convinced that starting a two leg European match by playing away (and therefore finishing at home) is a big advantage.

I - and my statistical colleagues on Saturday's Fink Tank - have never been convinced. We have never found there to be a statistically significant advantage.

So maybe the solution - a way of sorting out who is correct on this - would be to auction off the advantage to managers. They should trade the right to play the first leg away, with the first leg home team being given an advantage of some sort. For example the first leg away team might agree to play with 10 men for 10 minutes in one of the games, or some such.

My bet? Very quickly you would find the advantage a manager would be willing to yield in exchange for getting the correct game order would be zero.

How do we know Tevez helped West Ham?

Martin Samuel is unmissable this morning on the compensation bill facing West Ham.

Like him I was struck by the confidence with which it has been asserted that Carlos Tevez was responsible for three points being added to West Ham's total the season before last and that he therefore saved them from relegation.

Not only is it very hard to say if one player added those points, it doesn't take account of his contribution in other matches. He might very well have played to an inferior standard then and therefore, by comparison with someone else who might have played, actually lost them points.

You can make a stab at establishing what went on using modelling techniques. Was this done? I doubt it, and one reason I doubt it is that I work with the best modellers, possibly the only modellers, who could have established this. But no one asked the Fink Tank.

And incidentally on other occasions when the footballing authorities have been trying to establish the statistical impact of various controversies in the game, we have been asked.

A huge amount of money is at stake in this dispute. It's amazing that it is done on impressions and guesswork, rather than using statistics. 

What age should you take your child to football?

An interesting piece in T2 a couple of days back on an issue that many parents (particularly Dads) worry about - when is the right age to take your child to football?

Victoria Derbyshire is concerned that she sent her child to Upton Park too early. He was four. And now she fears that she might have put him off. As a result an unbroken male line of West Ham United fans may have been broken. And she may not be free to go shopping on matchdays.

Let's work through the problem for her, shall we?

First, her concern that sending a child to football too early might put them off for life is unwarranted.

She cites a number of instances where young children became bored at the game and never turned on to it again. But this, of course, does not prove that sending them to the game early caused their lack of interest.

I suspect that interest in watching ball games and in competitive sport is largely genetic.

If you send young children you will be doing it before you have been able to establish their disposition. Among these, a proportion will be ill disposed to ball games. If you send them later you only send children you already know are interested. So early watching doesn't put kids off.

Second, a genetic disposition to enjoy ball games is not I think the only genetic factor in play. Another is the extent to which the child seeks to fit in with their peer group.

Liking football is partly about social norms. Children like it (as opposed to, say, hockey) because their mates do and they want to fit in. That is one reason (only one) why boys are interested in it and girls on the whole are not.

So a child will be unlikely to enjoy and follow football properly until they are old enough to understand and follow the hobbies of other children. And to see it played at break time. That sort of unsupervised break time doesn't kick in until about five or six.

So at about that age you can start taking your son. But you don't really have the final say on whether they will enjoy it. And the age of beginning to watch doesn't settle matters.

Hope that is helpful.

Will Tal Ben Haim be excluded in the new Manchester City?

When deciding whether the new owners of Manchester City are fit and proper people to own a Premier League club, can I suggest the league gives a little bit of thought to the position of Tal Ben Haim.

In April 2006 West Ham United took their squad to a warm weather training camp. Well, almost all their squad.

Yossi Benayoun and Yaniv Katan went to Marbella instead. They had to, because as Israelis they are not allowed in to the United Arab Emirates. The club said the players had agreed to their exclusion and did not want to go to the UAE. But here is Katan's response when asked about his feelings on being left out:

Sometimes the best thing is not to react.

These two players are not the first to suffer this exclusion. Earlier in the same season Bolton Wanderers left their star central defender behind when they travelled to the UAE.

His name? Tal Ben Haim. Who is an Israeli international footballer and now plays for Manchester City.

So when City travel to the home of their new owners for training or a friendly match, as surely they very soon will, will they take their recently signed star defender with them? Or will he be excluded?

And as City are developed as a brand in the Middle East, which is part of the plan, will they have to sell the Israeli?

I think some sharp questions should be asked about how the new owners intend to treat their Israeli members of staff.

Why I'm thrilled about Robinho

I am a Chelsea fan. All summer, my club has been attempting to sign the Brazilian forward Robinho. Yesterday, with minutes to go before the summer transfer window shut it was announced that Real Madrid had sold Robinho for more than £30m. To Manchester City.

And I am thrilled.

This is not because I think Robinho is a poor player. Quite the contrary.

I am pleased, because the sudden ability of City to acquire such a star (the result of their acquisition by Arab billionaires) is a futher fillip to the Premier League and to big money football.

Those who dislike the way the Premier League has developed over the last twenty years complain that it has become drearily predictable. They accept that wealthy clubs have been able to bring some of the best players in the world to England, but claim both that this is not a price worth paying for the predictability.

This was a dubious point even before yesterday.

There are twenty clubs on the league. Before the City takeover, four of them had a more than 10 per cent chance of winning the title and nine a more than 10 per cent chance of being relegated. Of the remaining seven sides, four had a more than 10 per cent chance of qualifying to play in a European tournament next season.

Now City will move from relegation candidates to candidates for a top four position and, if the new owners are to be believed (I think they are) to title contenders next season.

By allowing big money (some of it, I better acknowledge, money from those who also own the Times)into football, the English Premier League is succeeding in becoming both thrillingly better than top flight football in this country 20 years ago while remaining unpredictable.

It is a victory for commercialism and market freedom.

What should we do about the 'Yid Army'?

Listen to my podcast on whether it's ok to support the 'Yid Army'