Never mind the results, feel the stats

[nw6pie]

I thought Montague spoke pretty well, although I thought Joe was probably better in getting to the point and saying things of substance, but I suppose he deals in numbers rather than humans, so it's easier for him to be direct.

The plan is pretty much what we thought it was from previous interviews. They are not going to splurge next year to get promoted at all costs. It sounds like the bros are very much here for the long term and are investing heavily behind the scenes, but don't want to 'do a Wrexham' and buy loads of players too good for the league. There is no satisfaction in that for them. In fact it sounds like they would regard that as failure as it becomes unsustainable.

I am generally in favour of what they are doing. We are experiencing a blip, but they won't panic and throw away the long term plan because of that. I didn't get the feeling that they are as stubborn as some make out, just that they want to do things the right way even if it takes time.

One thing I did find slightly worrying about the stats based approach is when Montague spoke at length about how we had a good defence last year and this year something has changed which they can't quite put their finger on to find an explanation from the data.

That seemed to be to be the verbal version of when to avoid kicking it long we pass the ball 25 times in our own half, narrowly avoiding a couple of catastrophes, before hurriedly passing to the keeper to kick it long anyway. Sometimes you can get so bogged down in a system that you can't see the wood for the trees.

The reason our defence is so bad is that we fall over, forget to mark people, give the ball away in dangerous areas, dont stop crosses and don't win enough headers. All this against teams who are much better than last year, with players who have never really proved themselves consistently at this level. No data required IMO.

It sounded very much like the defence will be the focus of the next transfer market though, which was reassuring.

Interesting, thanks. The most notable difference between the NL and L2 is that we are now incapable of controlling games. Whereas in the NL we would enjoy the bulk of possession and the bulk of efforts on goal, in L2 we rarely have more efforts on goal than the other team. Instead, we retain possession in our own half but don’t tire the opposition out because it’s all so slow, sideways and backwards, and then lose the ball in bad areas.

It shouldn’t be difficult for the club to identify the problem once they do a compilation of goals and big chances conceded.

[slack_pie]

Is anyone actually saying results don't matter?

I've heard people say statistics don't matter, which is also ridiculous. After all goals are a statistic, as are wins and points...

I think the closest anyone's come to saying "results don't matter" is the owners' recent post about results not reflecting performances due to bad luck, which IMO is an extremely high risk piece of analysis. If you're 100% right, great, if you're even a little bit wrong it can lead to going into next season with a fatally flawed team, a possibility I'm honestly very concerned about.

I think that message from the owners was rather worrying. They've always been so measured with their communications, but this showed a real inability to read the room. I think it was their way of saying "we're giving Maynard more time, and he'll be the coach next season" but it showed them to be a bit blinkered to say the least.

Possession alone is a completely worthless statistic. It's what you do with the ball that counts. And as we've seen countless times this season, most of our possession is in our own half and tends to be more damaging to us than the opposition.

[keldsyke]

You're missing the point. The table gives you the here bad now, the stats give you the trend over time

Yep agree its like trading, what you see on the day isn't a reflection of the overall trend of the market, hence using metrics like moving averages, divergences etc gives a better overview of the trend. What I would say is that you have no day to day control of the markets, where you do over your players and tactics, which means you could adjust those!

[Shropshire_Pie]

Didn't someone once say "There are lies, damn lies and statistics?" 😃

[Old_pie]

I think Montague was being coy. He can't really come out and say that the reason is the step up was too high for most of the defenders. Bearing in mind we will still need to play some of these guys, destroying them on a podcast is not the best idea.

Obviously. Stall took time to say it was a delicate time to mention names. Montague did however point out what he saw as the January successes, eg Macari, Robertson and maybe one other.

[slack_pie]

If you listened to Richard Montague on the magpie circle, he explained this. He said that the league table shows exactly where you are based on results but the statistics can help show where you will be in the future.

He stated that the performance metrics we had at the start of the year showed we should have had less points than we got and that recently our performance metrics showed we should have got more points than we got later in the season, this explained the lucky start of the season and unlucky mid to end of the season. He pointed out that under Maynard, the performance stats showed we stayed pretty much level so it probably would have happened under Williams also.

From what was implied, once we realised the budget wasn't as competitive as we had thought, we were hoping for the playoffs but missed out so we actually underperformed the budget. Next year the budget will be bumped a bit as we have the headroom to do so but we still want to out perform it with regards to points and performance.

I get where he/the club are going with this, but all this 'should have' talk is meaningless and seems to deflect away from the fact that results are the only thing that ultimately matters.

I have no idea if other clubs look at these metrics to decide whether they are 'lucky' or 'unlucky', but assuming that most don't, having access to this knowledge hasn't even given us an edge, seeing as we underperformed compared to our budget. So what's the point?

[The_Don_ORiordan]

I get where he/the club are going with this, but all this 'should have' talk is meaningless and seems to deflect away from the fact that results are the only thing that ultimately matters.

I have no idea if other clubs look at these metrics to decide whether they are 'lucky' or 'unlucky', but assuming that most don't, having access to this knowledge hasn't even given us an edge, seeing as we underperformed compared to our budget. So what's the point?

Well we could go back to the successful system of crazy owners sacking managers regularly signing loads of players who are garbage and dropping steadily with dire performances every week.

Or we can see if over the long term this method works. So far in 4 years we are higher than we were when they started. It would seem we aren’t spending levels of money that threatens the existence of the club and they are slowly learning.

It takes time. The more data you have the more accurate the decisions should be.

We are not the only club that underperformed versus budget, take Forest Green. That’s where we don’t want to be, and under this ownership I’m fairly confident we won’t be.

Neither however do I think we’ll be running away with the league.

[drillerpie]

Interesting, thanks. The most notable difference between the NL and L2 is that we are now incapable of controlling games. Whereas in the NL we would enjoy the bulk of possession and the bulk of efforts on goal, in L2 we rarely have more efforts on goal than the other team. Instead, we retain possession in our own half but don’t tire the opposition out because it’s all so slow, sideways and backwards, and then lose the ball in bad areas.

It shouldn’t be difficult for the club to identify the problem once they do a compilation of goals and big chances conceded.

Completely agree!

[drillerpie]

I think that message from the owners was rather worrying. They've always been so measured with their communications, but this showed a real inability to read the room. I think it was their way of saying "we're giving Maynard more time, and he'll be the coach next season" but it showed them to be a bit blinkered to say the least.

Possession alone is a completely worthless statistic. It's what you do with the ball that counts. And as we've seen countless times this season, most of our possession is in our own half and tends to be more damaging to us than the opposition.

I agree with the second part but I don't think they are proposing never ending possession to make the stats look good. They are results oriented at the end of the day and want to win.

Re: the first part, I got the impression their model (apparently they have a proprietary xG model they use) genuinely shows that performances didn't get worse from late LW to early SM, despite the results. To be honest, that is kind of what I was saying during that time. Players made more individual errors, Macca stopped scoring chances he was putting away before, but the performances were pretty similar.

[KeepTheMagpieFlyingH]

Metrics do matter and the majority of clubs use metrics in one way or another and have proved game changers for the likes of Brighton and Brentford..not only in terms of tactical efficiency but player recruitment. Players are signed using metrics across the board..more players moving into the league from non league is an example. Cameras now at every game down to step 2..all data collected..individual and team analysed and logged. Distance covered..duels won and lost..passes complete/incomplete etc..it goes on and on. Which is fantastic for the lads who’ve been missed and had to take the long route into the game..anything missed is quickly being picked up on.

Possession is a tricky one. It’s all good measuring overall %’s but you need to be measuring the effectiveness of the possession and that’s where Notts are failing in my opinion. I was critical even under Williams..the possession was slow and predictable even more so now under Maynard. A metric that should be used to measure the effectiveness of the possession is called packing..packing measures the teams and individuals ability to break lines..the receivers ability to hold the ball in between the lines and keep the chain going..the value in this metric is that only forward passes that break lines are scored..which gives a good indication of how quickly and efficiently your moving the ball forward. Notts are slow..which ends up with us playing high in front of deep compact units leading to difficulty breaking opponents down (low packing scores) and all sorts of trouble when recycling or on the turnover.

A google search on packing will give the ins and outs of how it works. A club that is heavily based on analytics are surely looking at this aswell as overall %’s but going on what I see they can’t be.