Episode 7: Pro Vercelli

In 2011, James Grayson witnessed a turnaround in the fortunes of his local football club. In the first half of the season, Lincoln City had teetered on the brink of relegation from League Two, but then they sacked their manager, brought in some new players, and went on a tear in the winter, winning six games out of seven. Instead of writing about how his team had saved their season, Grayson, blogging from his BlackBerry, used data to ask a different question: had they really gotten better at all? In a few short posts, Grayson changed the course of public soccer analytics for a decade, or at least foreshadowed a turn the discourse would soon take. But why was he asking the kinds of questions he did? Where did they come from? It was an invasion.Blogroll: * James Grayson, James’ Blog: The surprising form of Lincoln City: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, and Reviewed (February 2011)* James Grayson, James’ Blog: Links and data (March 2011)* James Grayson, James’ Blog: About the blog (April 2012)* James Grayson, James’ Blog: Regression to the mean can be cruel (ask the nearest Blackpool fan) (April 2011)* James Grayson, James’ Blog: Predicting Future Performance - Revisited (October 2011) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit postscriptpod.substack.com

In Episode 7, we couldn’t wait any more: we had to talk about our favorite sportswriter, Brian Phillips, whose weird, beautiful soccer blog Run of Play ran from 2007 to 2010 or so.In 2008, Phillips fell victim to a classic blunder: he got addicted to Football Manager. His yearlong series on the travails and triumphs of his FM team, Pro Vercelli, is a fun look at a video game that — as a couple of listeners pointed out — has been a massive influence on the soccer nerd world. We talk about how these posts effortlessly probe some of the sport’s most interesting questions and why Football Manager is so important to the story of analytics and tactics blogging.Blogroll* Brian Phillips, The Run of Play: Series: Pro Vercelli (November 2008 - October 2009)* Brian Phillips, The Run of Play: The Genius of Basketball and the Genius of Soccer (January 2008) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit postscriptpod.substack.com

In Episode 6, we find ourselves once again at the start of things, talking about the seminal work of Jonathan Wilson and Michael Cox. Where do you even start telling the story of how soccer is played? How should you describe the inner workings of the game, and what should your evidence look like? Wilson and Cox’s different approaches to writing about soccer inspired a generation of tactics and analytics bloggers to go forth and multiply.Blogroll* Jonathan Wilson, Inverting the Pyramid (September 2008)* The End of Forward Thinking (June 2008)* Michael Cox, Zonal Marking* Chelsea vs Manchester United (November 2009)* Brazil: A 4-2-3-1 or a midfield diamond? Neither. (November 2009)* Zonal Marking Glossary page* Introducing… The Central Winger (December 2010)* League Comparison #3: Shooting and Goals (January 2010) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit postscriptpod.substack.com

In the summer of 2006, a recently retired Pep Guardiola was obsessively watching the World Cup and writing about it for El País in an era when newspaper columns were going online. The way he described the game pointed the way to a richer, more detailed tactics writing — one that raises interesting questions for data analytics, too — but the English-speaking world would need years of blogging to catch up.Blogroll:* Pep Guardiola, El País: All the same (June 2006)* Pep Guardiola, El País: One meter (June 2006)* Pep Guardiola, El País: Going out (June 2006)* Pep Guardiola, El País: Feeling it (March 2007) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit postscriptpod.substack.com

From 2011 to 2012, when Arsenal bought the company, the StatDNA blog was a soccer nerd Atlantis. With one of their first posts, they gave a treasure trove of event data to the world for free and announced a research competition. In one of their last posts, they announced that they'd hired the winner of that competition, Sarah Rudd. In between, they basically completed the next decade of soccer analytics blogging — and then vanished into the sea (or the Wayback Machine).Blogroll* Jaeson Rosenfeld, StatDNA: The Key to Scoring Goals is Shots Inside the Box (March 2011)* Ben Alamar, StatDNA: How Defensive Pressure Impacts Goal Scoring Probability (March 2011)* Jaeson Rosenfeld, StatDNA: A Conceptual Statistical Framework For Understanding Goal Creation (March 2011)* Jaeson Rosenfeld, StatDNA: What Determines Shot Quality? (March 2011)* Jaeson Rosenfeld, StatDNA: Why players, teams are undifferentiated on “passing skill” (May 2011)* Ben Alamar, StatDNA: How we measure pass value creation: Advancing the Ball (June 2011)* Jaeson Rosenfeld and Can Geng, StatDNA: Wasting Possession: The Statistical argument for using short goal kicks more (August 2011)* Sarah Rudd, StatDNA: A Framework for Tactical Analysis and Individual Offensive Production Assessment in Soccer Using Markov Chains (September 2011)* Sarah Rudd: Video of 2011 NESSIS Presentation of Markov chain paper This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit postscriptpod.substack.com

Episode 3 follows the story of Ian Graham, who started as a researcher for a groundbreaking soccer analytics newspaper column and rose to become Director of Research at Liverpool FC. Along the way, he spent some time in our blogging circles and introduced what may have been soccer’s first public possession value model, hidden in plain sight.Blogroll* Daniel Finkelstein, The Fink Tank: Breaking All the Rules (November 2002)* Daniel Finkelstein, The Fink Tank: Is it right to tell manager time is up? (November 2005)* Ian Graham, The Football Laboratory (November 2006)* Castrol, YouTube: What is the Castrol Index? (June 2009)* Ian Graham, Decision Technology’s Football Blog: Is Second Season Syndrome a Myth? (August 2011) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit postscriptpod.substack.com

In Episode 2, we travel even further back to 2009, when Howard Hamilton starts what may be the first soccer analytics blog (there are many beginnings). Inspired by Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, he thinks about what a similar approach would require in a sport like soccer — and decides it’ll never work.Blogroll* Howard Hamilton, Soccermetrics: Moneyball and Soccer (January 2009, first published on Hexagonalblog in November 2008) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit postscriptpod.substack.com

In the first episode of Post Script, we travel all the way back to what Tiotal Football calls “the spiritual birth of soccer analytics blogging,” when a couple of people writing about soccer data started a conversation.Blogroll* Sarah Rudd, On Football: On offensive production — creating vs. finishing (January 2011)* Chris Anderson, Soccer by the Numbers: Creating chances v. taking them: the Premier League in 2009/10 (January 2011) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit postscriptpod.substack.com