There is something almost unfair about the speed with which Liverpool have replaced Brendan Rodgers. Managerial dismissals, particularly ones at clubs which have the media profile of Liverpool, should be drawn out, vicious things, all sides involved briefing furiously and trashing one another in the press.
Proper football men and stats nerds should work together
Brendan Rodgers’ departure from Liverpool has once again stirred up the anti-analytics elements of the English press. But why do some writers hate the number crunchers so?
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Well, almost.
The rising tide of Kloppmania may have swept nearly everything before it, but there has still been time for a quick row about Rodgers and the structure in which he was operating, particularly the notorious transfer committee. Well-briefed pieces appeared in both the Independent and the Daily Mail, though the interesting nuggets about Rodgers feeling isolated and bypassed by those he was working with are rather lost behind the blasts of the trumpets against the monstrous regiment of statisticians. Which, as ever, fail to move much beyond "some laptop-wielding nerd identified Oussama Assaidi as a prospect and as such the very idea of counting cannot be trusted." That's not a direct quote.
This, in turn, has led to another flare up of the rumbling culture war between the analytics insurgents, who believe all human endeavour can and must be reduced to a single equation, and the traditionalist old guard, who believe the only way to understand a footballer is by following him around for weeks at a time and watching everything he does, meticulously observing his breakfast habits, which way ‘round he arranges his toilet paper, and whether he throws chewing gum into a bin or just drops it in the street. Skimmed milk, loose sheet coming out the back of the roll, lets it fall wherever? Psychologically weak, boss. Not worth the money.
All entirely ignorable, of course. Analytics is here and here to stay, simply because football club owners, even if they're not true believers like Liverpool's, simply can't afford to ignore it on the off-chance it's of any use. Modern football clubs have to scout the world, and there's only so many eyeballs to go around. All clubs arrive at their own arrangements, of course, but Liverpool's only real mistake was one of public relations. In the papers and in the imagination, the transfer committee took on a significance beyond itself, became a straw cabal of straw men with straw laptops, all working together to destroy their manager for some unspecified but doubtless dastardly reason.
There, though, an interesting common thread to the media pieces. Here’s Neil Ashton in the Mail on the working habits of the analysts:
a new breed sits in air-conditioned offices, cutting up videos from matches all over the world and burying their heads in the stats
And here’s Neil Moxley in the Mirror on the best scouting methods:
it’s far better to don your big coat and sit in a cold stand for two hours actually watching [footballers] play
Two data points don’t necessarily add up to a trend, but the message is clear. Proper football folk have no time for such trifles as temperature and personal comfort. If you’re indoors and it’s too hot, you just sweat right on through your shirt. If you’re outside and it’s cold? Well, of course the big coat can go on, but nobody’s going indoors. You stay outside and let the wind scour your face raw. Wise, perhaps. There’s no air conditioning in there, and you’ll only have to faff about taking off the big coat.
The implication is clear, too. Wherever there is mild discomfort, the decision to suffer through that discomfort serves to elevate the sufferer over those who might, for example, wish to turn on the air conditioning, or not stand about in the cold. Any work done in an air conditioned office is therefore inferior. It is suspect. It is inauthentic. How much can you truly know about a footballer if your armpit is dry or your toes unfrozen? How much can you truly know about yourself?
There are echoes here of football’s cultural prehistory. Of the sport’s roots in the muscular Christian idea that young men should be forced out into the mud and the wind and the rain, then made to run around in teams until they can run no more. Then and only then would they be protected from the perils of comfortable solitude; then, and only then, would they be kept from “the heinous sin of self-pollution.” The papers can’t say, of course, that everybody who stays indoors, in controlled temperatures, and practices football analytics is a sexual degenerate, pleasuring themselves to a place on Satan’s backroom staff. But they can heavily suggest it.
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What is the solution? Perhaps the analysts need to undergo something of a rebrand, to present their business as one of hardship and stoicism. Turn off the air conditioning and sweat through those shirts. Take the laptops out into the snow. Given that nobody knows what running a regression analysis actually involves, it shouldn’t be too difficult for the world’s statisticians to convince the media that it is an exhausting, physically taxing process that involves literally running. Ideally in the rain. Hopefully through puddles. What if ExpG could only be found at the bottom of a really big and definitely dangerous mine? Would it be okay then?
There is, doubtless, much to be gained from watching players play, and since that happens come rain or shine or snow or sleet, so too must the watching. But there is patently also some value in the analytical approach; Liverpool's committee may have lit upon Assaidi and Iago Aspas, but they also reportedly picked out Daniel Sturridge (apparently against Brendan Rodgers' wishes) and Philippe Coutinho, which suggests that their spreadsheets aren't totally useless. One might almost be tempted to conclude that neither approach is flawless yet both have value, were it not for the fact that every signing Liverpool made before the invention of the laptop went on to win the Ballon d'Or.
Still, as Jürgen Klopp urges, let us focus on the future. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a glorious utopia somewhere down the line where “heavily sweating luddite” and “air-conditioned wanker” are able to work together. Where they can walk, sticky hand in sticky hand, in the same direction. That is what Liverpool are chasing; that’s what all football clubs are chasing. Besides, the two sides are far more alike than either would care to admit: Both are driven by the same dream; both are looking for diamonds among pebbles. They’re just looking in different places. And what, after all, is a big coat, if not just socially acceptable air conditioning?
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