One of the things I like when looking over data is being able to apply consistent values to groups of things. It’s not about accuracy to the specific with regard to the outside world, but about the accuracy to the specific within its group. Like creating coefficients to weight things properly, so you get apples to apples instead of apples to oranges.
Short version: I like to look at two or more things and compare them effectively.
One of the popular websites in the soccer world, Transfermarkt.com, has what they call a “Player Value”. I don’t know what formula they use, and I don’t even know if they even share that formula, although I would be curious. What I do like about these values is that they feel consistent within the set of players. It’s got a ‘video game’ vibe to it, which I can appreciate. It’s a bit inflated in terms of transfer fees, but those are always so dependent on the two clubs and contracts and wages and blah blah blah. I’m not a club selling a player, I’m someone wanting to compare players. So this works perfectly.
The first thing I did with these values was look at the clubs as a whole, with the Premier League my initial sample set, as I’m a true blue Chelsea supporter. I gathered up the TM Values for the clubs, which are just sums of all of the players on the roster, and I for fun did a quick little table of TM Value per point gained this season. Pro Tip: Don’t do this if you are afraid of the result:
That’s right, fellow Chelsea supporters, this hurts to see. Not only are we on top of the list, but notice that Chelsea, Man United, and Spurs are ALL ahead of the top two sides this year, who are valued a LOT higher. This is because they have what in the industry are known as “good” players (technical term), and we have way too many “mediocre” players. It’s all about distribution and dead weight.
What this should shine some light on though is that if you spend “properly” you will likely be more effective. Lookin’ right at you, Chelsea board. Stop buying everyone in the 30-35m range and crossing your fingers.
At this point, I was concerned. I needed more detail. More data. So I captured all of the individual player values for each of the top 6 sides (all I care about normally) and put them into a box/whisker plot chart to take a visual look. For those that aren’t familiar, the ‘boxes’ in dark green and light green represent the middle 50%. So dark green is 25%-50%, and the light green is 50%-75%. Each red dot is a player. The “whiskers” are either the max/min value (depending on upper or lower) or, to steal from the Tableau definition: ” all points within 1.5 times the interquartile range (in other words, all points within 1.5 times the width of the adjoining box) “.
Some insights:
- Obviously Man City have spent the most, and have the most gathered talent, we all know this. Their bench is usually full of players that are often better than their opponent’s starters.
- Chelsea have an interesting distribution, but at the end of the day, it’s disappointing. Our 75% mark is just over 50M? (These values are all in Euros FYI). It’s better than Spurs and Arsenal but not by much.
- Notice that Liverpool, Spurs, and Chelsea each have a 150M player, but that he’s out of their Whisker range. This is why City won the league, being able to rely on more than one mega-star.
- As usual, Man United underperformed. Ha Ha.
Additionally, to get a better breakdown, I put them into position buckets of DEF, MID, ATK, or GK. Good enough to be definitive, generic enough to ensure full buckets:
I’ve got the chart sorted by Table Position, and with ATK, DEF, MID, GK order.
Some observations and insights:
- Notice how little Man City have in terms of midfield player value. This stems from their usual 4-1-4-1 and playing 5 attacking players on the pitch. Fern is low rated, because he’s old, but I feel he’s undervalued given the system and his benefit to it.
- Notice that four of the six have high valued goal keepers, including the Top 3. I think DDG’s value is going to drop soon, so that’s a bit of a false peak, but in recent year’s he’s literally kept Man United alive with his save ability. Keepers are important!
- Spurs, Liverpool, City, all have high value attacking players. And lots of them. Notice that at the 150M peak, their whiskers are still including them. Then look at poor little Chelsea. It’s easily the most embarrassing set of attacking players in the list. And we wonder why we struggle to score!
- Spurs also have next to nothing representing their midfield. But that’s because their midfield sucks. Hard. And Levy refused to buy any new midfielders, and it probably cost them third place. Don’t ask me how they are in the CL Final, I am assuming that Levy is coming up on the end of some ten year Crossroads Devil Deal, or something.
- Arsenal and Man Utd have similar ATK bands, and similar table places. Shocking! In fact, they look similar everywhere but keeper, really. And the keeper box here is skewed, due to only having 2-3 values for each team.
- Notice that Liverpool and City each have two defenders with a higher value than our best defender. This is how you end up with a really low amount of goals conceded: Better players. And I’ll even argue that the Chelsea players are a bit overvalued by TM, too.
I’d say that was a fun run through some talent comparisons among the Top 6, and an educational trip, but it was also a bit disappointing, confirming what we already know. Too much “okay” talent, and not enough top talent is the key to always fighting and clawing for Top 4 spots and forgetting about winning lots of trophies. Sound familiar?