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AndyW

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Everything posted by AndyW

  1. He flew with his Dad who initially stayed with him for a month. He remained here on his own, though received regular visits from family. Sorry if you felt mislead. Not intended.
  2. The latest Rovers Academy Podcast was an interview with RB/RWB Jay Haddow. Jay is a Hong Kong native who came over to England at the age of 12 on his own and Rovers approached him pretty quickly. He has been part of the Academy since then and he is a key part of our fantastic U18 side and now U23s as well. https://youtu.be/m844HUEJMIw
  3. Thanks for posting that @JoeH that's what I had come here to do...🙂 What did people make of what Stuart had to say? Any questions that you wanted to be asked that weren't?
  4. What I will also say is that to come out and say that we will be positive at QPR and then produce a game plan to do the exact opposite and then to not even acknowledge the travelling fans who are expecting a positive display is very poor indeed.
  5. I think what he was trying to do was highlight how the team was set up. At no point did he actually defend those tactics but illustrated using the best publically available chance creation descriptor that, yes, indeed QPR created very little in the first half and indeed from open play all game. Problem was, as we all saw, we created nothing (albeit we hit the post). So the balance in the match was wrong. But any chance to change it effectively was severely hampered by injuries. Happy to discuss differences of opinion on tactical setups, the merits (or lack thereof) of xG & anything else. All opinions 100% valid, mine certainly has no more validity than anyone else's.
  6. Hi all. I had the tremendous honour of recording with James Beattie recently. It was actually the day after news broke of the European Super League, which actually seems a lifetime ago. Obviously you all know James so I don't need to say much but it's a cracking listen, he's a really top bloke. For those of you who went to QEGS it'll be particularly interesting.
  7. Hi Tom. The takeaway was that when John Buckley has played Blackburn Rovers have scored more than they concede. I never should've posted the entire screenshot really, it's just confused the point. I would, however, be interested to know if you have read the recruitment document. Would be interesting to hear a professional opinion on that.
  8. Apologies to all, this is my fault for plonking a table down without explaining it's meaning. It's not my table, it's direct from fbref which uses Statsbomb data. The argument was around whether we won with Buckley in the team. All that table is showing is that we have a positive goal difference in the time that he has played. Whilst JB has been on the pitch we have scored 15 and conceded 10 in 2020/21. But, as the table shows, the vast majority of our players have a net positive (because we had a positive goal difference across the season). JBs ratio is 10th best in the squad. That table DOESN'T SHOW how good players are. It doesn't show Armstrong is poor for the team whilst JRC is brilliant. Sometimes people do infer that, but I can't have it. As has been said before, football is a chaotic, low-margin game with 22 players on the pitch. To suggest that the presence of one player makes a telling difference is (for the most part) debatable. Even a player as influential as Dack or Travis. This was one of the problems with Mowbray's arguments last year about them making coming back and making a huge difference.
  9. Don't want to add more fuel to the fire necessarily and not trying to fool Sparks' eyes, if you think Buckley isn't up to it, that's fine. But Buckley is statistically a net positive to the side. Still a small sample in terms of minutes but to say we lose every time he starts is a bit far. I genuinely do rate him FWIW. I see the same physical flaws as we all do but technically I think he has it. Jason Wilcox also name-checked him in our interview as Rovers' best youth product. So that'll do for me too.
  10. I absolutely agree that bias will always exist within data. But the job of a good analyst is to provide insights taking into account that knowledge of bias. Identifying a team's strengths and weaknesses is another thing that needs to be done via visual analysis as well as data, and by watching all 46 games I think I am well placed to be able to provide both. It is interesting that trying to work for a professional football club could be considered a bias, I think there may be something in that tbf. But I am happy with, and stand by, the conclusions reached in what I wrote. Some metrics are completely dependent on the capture of the data, and the person tagging them. Wyscout data is known to not be the gold standard, Opta and Statsbomb are ahead, but on a large enough sample size differences are found to be fairly negligible. Ranking considerably higher in almost every attacking metric and defensive metric than either of the previous two seasons is interesting if nothing else, the point is that it hasn't led to better results so there is clearly a problem there. I came up with 5 or 6 things that I thought could be improved and then attempted to do that with some players. The fact is that a percentage of it will be the manager and coaching staff, which is way beyond my remit. As for xG, I understand that it's controversial. And some models are better than others, again Wyscout's isn't the best out there. But if you said that you created more/better chances than your opponents on most occasions then you would take that every time. And that's all I am saying. Last season that wasn't the case, yet the results were slightly better. However, in this season it hasn't been. Again, this suggests a problem but not necessarily a problem that says "we're a terrible football team". Dysfunctional perhaps. Badly coached? Individual performances/errors making a difference? Either way, this type of analysis and recruitment is what goes on at the top of the game. The fact that more and more clubs are hiring people to do this job means that they see some value in it. It may be too much, it's not for me to say.
  11. Absolutely and that is why, as again stated in the document, there are traditional scouting analysis for every player recommended. Also, if you have any time, watch the recent Stats Show videos on modern recruitment. An agreement that the visual, video and data analysis has to be in sync. In fact, I weighted all of my work towards visual scouting. It takes a long time to get to know these players and know that they are the right character for your club. God knows we need some character bringing in.
  12. Hi all. Would like to thank anyone and everyone who has given my work a read over the last few days. As you can probably tell it took a very long time to do and a lot of late nights around my full time job and young family, so any view or like or comment is much appreciated. Just in answer to some comments around motive. Yes, although I am currently a player analyst part-time at FIVEYARDS (a football scouting/gambling game) it is my dream to work in recruitment for a club. That is very unlikely to be Blackburn. If they had wanted the style of stuff I do then they had ample time after last year's work. So I had no reason to defend Mowbray and the club, but my general feeling, as displayed in the document, is that although we have been abject in spells this season, and yes the position in the league was really poor, there does seem to be some performance based positives. I know that view doesn't chime with most and that is totally fine. I put forward my arguments in the document and if you don't agree we don't need to fall out over it, I have total respect for other people's opinions and I hope you can respect the effort and professionalism I have attempted to display in the analysis. As for people decrying data, it's true that football is a crazy, unpredictable, creative, low margin sport. People who take their opinions solely from data are barking up the wrong tree. It is also my opinion that people who take their opinions solely from results are barking up the wrong tree also. This is the reason why Liverpool, Man City, Brentford, Barnsley, Norwich et.al. are recruiting and using more data analysis and trying to use it to inform strategy. Ultimately though it is the coaching staff and players on the pitch and the things they do that matter. 15th wasn't good enough so I tried to use analysis to find the key reasons for that and propose solutions via recruitment. That is what I thought should be at the essence of what clubs should try to do. Allocate resources in the best way possible. I don't believe that Mowbray is the man to take us up. And I don't mind if he is sacked tomorrow. But what I do want to see is a continuation of the progressive football philosophy which is more evident in our Academy sides than our senior one. The fault for that may well lie with Mowbray, as I also bring up in the document. I'm happy to take any direct questions and also to talk about data and methods. Happy to talk about my motives as well if that's what is a concern. Thanks all, Andy
  13. Something tells me that this won't hit the same tone as the prevailing discussion but... No matter where on the in-out spectrum you sit hopefully there is enough in there to provoke reasoned debate. Might want to forward to 20mins in if you aren't interested in general performance metrics discussion and want to just see the pure Rovers based stuff. https://youtu.be/irZD0MUQ6DU
  14. What is it that you think it says exactly? That he hasn't a clue what he's doing?
  15. First time post. I don't understand this. I think we should probably celebrate a person getting a promotion and more money for his family. Good for him. There are concerns for the club, from the poor results to the continued anonymity of our owners and the lack of transparency in future planning. But I don't think we need to attribute every single thing that happens to Mowbray, Venus & Waggott.
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