Quote:
Originally Posted by Cubs16
It is fantastic that you are going to attempt to do this and will be hugely entertaining to follow the journey.
I've been an pro odds compiler for the last 5 years and also play some poker. I've always thought that analysis abilities from top level poker players would be hugely well suited to professional sports. I imagine it is a huge leak in lower league football clubs.
The only thing I would disagree with is your desire to play the long game. I would take absolutely every shortcut available to you and if that is through your wealth so be it. With good planning and decision making I def think this would be the best option, life is short and opportunities in this field are scarce.
Some options available to you are to use your contacts to attempt to talk to Tony Bloom. I think an hour of his time and knowledge would be priceless. His sports betting company values every player in each position and has built a hugely profitable analysis empire. This has also obv been implemented at Brighton (now my second team) who are likely to be a premier league club next season. I would also consider the thoughts of top dfs players that you could presumably meet through your contacts, people like Saahil and Brandon Adams. There's also a couple of good soccer dfs players like redcoat85 and Samalek. If these guys are using reinforcement learning (saahil) then IMO this would be so much more valuable than some FA course that every other wannabe coach is doing. Surely following the system like this won't set you apart from the standard. You become one of the thousands with the same thought processes.
I think the abilities of a manager/coach are hugely overrated when a team is winning and hugely underrated when a team is losing. See Ranieri. The most valuable asset would be analysis of players for recruitment, as well as analysis of opponents from a tactical perspective. Knowing your population imbalances and building a squad to exploit the **** out of them.
Will be following and GL.
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I would assume at this stage, every club in the first couple of tiers has people working on data analysis of players and potential players. Recruitment teams these days are pretty big and are starting to embrace the technology that we have.
Agree that pads should utilise every contact possible to get things done asap.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OurSurveySays
Great post buddy, thanks for that!
Do you want to manage a club in the premier league or own one?
A manager can have many different titles and lots of different roles in this day and age.
Manager, Coach, Technical director, Head of football.
If you're looking to manage a team in the premier league, there aren't really any shortcuts. You will need thousands of hours of high-level coaching experience to be a premier league manager.
Bloom almost definitely doesn't deal with the day to day business of the squad and most likely has a team dozens strong that work on the daily running of the squad and the club on a whole. If you get an hour of his time however, i'm sure it would have insane value but not really to do with being a manager.
If you want to own a premier league club, this is a completely different vision and also fraught with a lot of challenges. Bloom has put somewhere in the region of £200m into Brighton and will need a good chunk more for them to be a success in the premier league.
A premier league manager is only one related job title when it comes to running a successful team. If you take Manchester United as an example (because that's who I support) they have somewhere in the region of 60-70 full time non playing staff.
The team includes:
Executive chairman
Vice chairman and director
Managing director
CFO
Commercial director
Ambassadors
half a dozen other directors of varying involvement
Manager
Assistant manager
First team coaches
Head of first team development
Reserve manager, assistant and team
Head of academy and team
Head of recruitment and team
Hundreds of scouts worldwide
Head of performance
Analytics department
Strength and conditioning team
Sport science team
Plus heaps of others i'm probably missing.
As someone who currently works full time in football and is a registered scout with the PFSA, I can see lots of gaps daily in recruiting that you could bring to a smaller club.
I've been at a couple of conferences recently that have had presentations by elite level clubs and some of the stuff they are doing is really interesting. One club has the youth teams analysing their own footage after games, linking clips of the first team and how to improve in various areas. I'm sure lots of others are doing similar things.
I think your best opportunities are going to lie away from managerial roles. Invest in a small semi-pro team and use all your skills learned from poker and bitb to influence the team as positively as possible. You won't be able to be a day to day manager but you could own or be on the board.
If you want to bounce any ideas around, send me a message. I've got lots of ideas and have been working in football on and off for 10 years.