Blog Posts

  • Mining for Aussie Gold – Finding Mark Schwarzer’s Replacement

    After earning over a hundred caps for Australia, Mark Schwarzer announced his retirement from international football this month. The Socceroos don’t now have a replacement who is regularly playing for a club in any of the world’s big leagues. Mitchell Langerak sits on the bench at Dortmund while Adam Federici lost both Premier League status…

  • A Big Week in Analytics?

    It was the Elite Minds in Sports conference this week at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium and staff from several top clubs (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Everton) were on hand to give their views on topics such as talent acquisition, injury management and analytics. Importantly, also present was someone from mainstream media: Sean Ingle of the Guardian.…

  • Hugo Lloris ‘is Bearings

    It’s all about goalkeepers in the press this week innit? Well just Joe Hart really, and we already jumped on that bandwagon last time out. So who’s getting it in the neck this time? Old Hugo Lloris down at White Hart Lane, that’s who. Ok, so it’s not really topical this one – we’re just…

  • A Hole in the Hart?

    Joe Hart’s recent gaffes have given rise to closer scrutiny of goalkeepers in the last few weeks. Unfortunately, there are few people out there doing much statistical work on them. Even the pros aren’t which was highlighted by Sean Ingle’s piece in the Guardian. One exception to the rule is @ColinTTrainor who did this during…

  • A Look at Lukaku

    Romelu Lukaku has made a massive impression at Goodison Park already. The fans have fallen for him and goalkeepers have fallen down in front of him (cough*Krul*). We decided to put the forward through his goal expectation model paces. The model provides us with a benchmark average that all players can be compared to from…