How big clubs are using data analysis to get the edge in technology war

The battle among Europe's top sides is not just limited to the confines of a football pitch, with clubs upping the ante to find any marginal advantage in a burgeoning technology war.

Manchester City's recent hiring of a number of rocket scientists has taken things to the next level, with the Premier League side expanding their analysis team so as to get the jump on their rivals.

It is just one of a number of moves City have made in a bid to develop their data team. The club hosted a a recent artificial intelligence competition they ran in conjunction with Google, challenging tech whizzes to develop artificial intelligence 'agents'.

These 'agents' would pose as players within a match situation, and would be programmed to react to normal occurrences we typically see week in, week out.

The hope is that the high-level technology could one day simulate the behaviour of opposition teams within different in-game situations, allowing City to be able to predict what is likely to happen.

It is a somewhat overwhelming concept to compute, but there is a general unanimity among club chiefs that technology such as this is the way forwards.

'Big Data is the future of football, Sevilla's sporting director Monchi said in 2019. 'Lately, more than scouts, we have started looking for engineers, mathematicians, physicists and experts in statistics or algorithms.'

In truth, Liverpool have led the way with their state-of-the-art data analysis department in recent years.

Led by Dr Ian Graham, who has a PhD in physics from Harvard University, the club have hired a chess champion, Dafydd Steele, as well as an astrophysicist, Tim Waskett, who specialises in coding.

Jurgen Klopp has made great use of his data department, who played a major role in recruiting the Reds boss in 2015. The German had endured a torrid season with Borussia Dortmund before leaving the club, with local media saying the manager was finished.

However, the number crunchers concluded he had simply been unlucky.

'I analysed 10 seasons of Bundesliga performances, and Dortmund were the second-unluckiest team in that 10-year history,' Graham told the Freakonomics podcast. 'It was just some terrible luck that cost Jurgen that one season.'

Now, with Klopp's encouragement, the Reds are looking way beyond how a player directly impacts a game.

These statistics go way beyond what we are used to seeing on television - such as possession, chances created, expected goals too. Liverpool, alongside a host of other clubs, use missile-tracking technology to examine influence of players off the ball, defensive stability, pitch control and off-ball scoring opportunities.

'The primary currency of football is goals and it’s our job to turn every action that is on the pitch — every pass, every throw, every shot — into a goal probability,' Waskett said in a Royal Institution lecture.

'For roughly 200 games per weekend we get data involving every single ball touched in the game. Every time a player passes the ball, we mark it on the pitch. Roughly every second or so there is a new pass.

'For Premier League games we get tracking data from a set of cameras all around the stadium. They monitor the position of all the players, so that’s 22 players all around the ball.

'You end up with about 1.5 million data points and this data gives us a goal value for every player and every position on the pitch.'

In fact, Arsenal boast a team of 15 specialists that use missile-tracking technology, otherwise known as 'optimal tracking', to give a picture of precisely what's happening in every second of a game and training.

Optimal tracking is used to pinpoint the position of players on the pitch 25 times a second, in relation to the ball, opposition and team-mates.

The analysts use the technology to assess every phase of play - in possession, out of possession, in transition - and compare what actually happens to what the team's intention was in each instance to give a scientific assessment of the performance.

Mikel Arteta was ridiculed earlier this season for claiming that Arsenal had a measly 3 per cent chance of defeat against Burnley following their loss at the Emirates. Those figures were obtained by the Gunners' tech whizzes.

Where Arsenal differ to other clubs is that they have their own in-house data company - StatDNA - so even other analysts don't know exactly how they work.

Arsenal chief Edu is hoping that technology can help his club get ahead on the transfer front, with finances believed to be limited as a result of successive poor league finishes by the Gunners.

The club's data team is integral to poaching the world's best young talent, and the departure of several key scouts in 2020 would suggest that Edu is putting all his eggs in the StatDNA basket.

The Gunners' London rivals, Chelsea, are also leaning heavily on data to help with recruitment decisions, as well as monitoring the development of a swathe of youngsters.

According to The Athletic, the Blues use software called QlikView as a platform for a Chelsea-specific player database, where scout reports, video clips and performance data can be kept in one place. The tool has proved beneficial in increasing transparency with regards to recruitment decisions at the club.

Moreover, the same report outlines that the club are putting more emphasis on data when making decisions on youngsters than youth games.

Chelsea monitor a large number of youngsters sent out on loan or training with the club's youth teams. Billy Gilmour's impressive physical metrics in training was enough to convince former boss Frank Lampard that the youngster was ready to play senior football.

Manchester United, however, are understood to trail behind their innovative rivals when it comes to using technology, particularly for recruitment, The Athletic reports.

Last year, the Red Devils hired a team of eight data specialists to help the club identify possible transfer targets, in a bid to move away from paying a lot of money for big-name players.

Barcelona may be a club of strong tradition and a non-negotiable style of play, but even the Catalonians have taken steps to make the most of date analysis.

Javier Hernandez heads up the club's analytics department, and told ESPN in 2018 that after a couple of seasons he has seen vast improvements in the coaching staff and players integrating data into training.

'It's been a long process,' Fernandez told ESPN. 'But now, after two years, our coaches have started to develop the algorithms verbally.

'They're understanding what they can do with data. It's better for us because we know what [adds] value for them and they practically provide the algorithm in words so we can go and start mapping the first base of knowledge regarding what you can do in data and then grow from there.'

Fernandez learnt in 2017 that Barcelona star Lionel Messi created more space for himself by standing still or jogging than other players did by running. A finding that made him reflect that it is more beneficial to run better, than it is to run more.

This use of innovative technology is not just limited to the teams at the top, though. ALK Capital, Burnley's ambitious new owners, own stakes in two sport-tech companies.

New chief executive Alan Pace told Sportsmail in January that the Americans are not playing 'Moneyball' at Turf Moor, but admitted that football needs to catch up with the technology 'evolution'.

'There is an evolution on the sports tech side and it's really time football started to go a bit further,' he said.

'When you look at data and analytics, they don't require someone needing to have done 30 years as a scout. There is a little bit of living in the past [in football].'

'There is a tremendous opportunity here to mesh data with experience.

'We'll try different things but that doesn't mean everything at our disposal gets used or is the best thing for this club. We're willing to come in as evolutionary rather than revolutionary.'