We’ve all seen the recent figures on wages in the Premiership, but which clubs get the most for their money? Here in the States we’d ask who’s getting the best “bang for the buck”. In England, I don’t know what they’d call it. Quality for the quid? Points for the pound? Woot for the wedge? Anyway, I found the most recent player payroll figures by club for the 2006-07 season. I then matched these salary numbers up with the clubs’ point totals from that season’s league play. You might argue that cup tournaments should have a chance to add to that productivity number, but it’s cleaner to ignore it rather than to obsess over how much to weight those non-league matches. Simple point totals offer decent comparability across clubs.
As most anyone would guess, there’s a strong positive relationship between success and payroll. The plot below shows this:
What to me is more interesting, though, is to look at the clubs that appear far above and far below the fitted line. A regression through all 20 observations shows the best fitting straight-line relationship between wages and points. A club that had more points than its wage level alone would have predicted would appear above the line. This is a measure of how effective they were in turning wages into results. Clubs that aren’t so efficient will appear below the line.
Not surprisingly, all the demoted teams last year fell below the line. Another notable underachiever was Newcastle. Money alone doesn’t alleviate boredom, eh Kev? On the other side of the “quality for the quid” spectrum is Man U. They had a whopping 17 points more than their wage level would have suggested. Others that did well by this metric were Spurs, Everton, Bolton and Reading. For the Royals, mean reversion kicked in this year, but that’s another story.
Chelsea is an interesting case. If you squint at the data the right way, you might see a kind of leveling off in Points at higher Wages. If a curved line were fit instead, with Chelsea influencing the fall-off, we’d be showing diminishing marginal productivity. (Does this make you nostalgic for your days in economics, Susan?) NO, answers Susan.
Anyway, even just this simple analysis seems revealing. Of course, I’m predisposed to anything that makes Man U look good.
Guest statistician: Steve
Tags: Chelsea, English Premier League, football, Manchester United, Newcastle, Premiership wages, soccer
June 7, 2008 at 2:58 am |
Great peice.I love to think.Great one.
June 7, 2008 at 6:09 am |
That’s very interesting. That makes me curious about the Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish leagues. What stats program (if any) did you use to make that? I wish I could elaborate and discuss, but my statistics background is pretty basic at the moment. But, I’m still very curious about those leagues. Hmm…
Your translation was close.
“Are you (plural) ready? I’m ready for Euro 2008, I am not able to wait (or I can’t wait). I am ready to watch the soccer team of Portugal dance their way to victory! At arms Portugal!”
- There will be more posts entirely in Portuguese to come, and hopefully someone fluent will correct my errors so I can learn during the summer.
As for Ronaldo, he may indeed go to Spain. At first it didn’t sound like he or Man U were having any of it. However the news/media keep insisting there’s something there. Of course with the help of the Madrid boss’ persistence. If he has made a decision, we won’t hear about it until after the Euros.
June 7, 2008 at 4:09 pm |
Adam,
I was going to ask Steve if he could find the same data for other leagues and see what those results look like. He’s out for a run now, but I’m sure he can tell you which program he used to generate that regression. He just came back and said it was S-Plus, but anything will do, including an Excel spreadsheet.
Weren’t you taking Portuguese in school? That should help you when you go over there some day to watch FC Porto or Benfica, right? I wonder how Freddy likes his total-immersion Portuguese language education. That’s the best way to learn, of course. Btw, I haven’t read your Porto article yet–you had so many posts for me to catch up on.
I will admit that I don’t really understand how someone who is in the middle of a written contract can expect to get out of it just because he wants to. My American/Anglo-Saxon sensibilities on contracts would make me respond, “Tough luck, Crissy. You’re stuck in Manchester.” But I suppose they do things differently in European football.
Time to watch Switzerland-Czech Republic.
June 7, 2008 at 11:46 pm |
On the contract issue, part of me sees this kind of this thing as some kind of karmic revenge for the old retain-and-transfer system in England, whereby a club held a player’s registration effectively in perpetuity. A player could put in a transfer request, but if it was rejected, tough. The only other way to leave was if you were cut at the end of the season, and even then (I think) your club could still demand a transfer fee if they wanted. It took years of agitation from the Players’ Union to change this, and they partly succeeded in the ’60s; it was only fully brought down by Bosman. So, on a cosmic level, if one believes in such things, the clubs are reaping what they sowed.
June 8, 2008 at 7:56 pm |
Those were the bad old days, indeed. We had a similar system in baseball as well, but now players can become free agents after six years or so. (Don’t really know off the top of my head). Even then, six years is a long time for any player to be stuck somewhere that he doesn’t want to be.
I definitely favor every player having the right to freely negotiate and move to the situation that’s best for him. After all, that’s what we have in the dull “real world.” But the Crissy situation is strange to me because it makes his contract seem meaningless.
Maybe it’s foolish to agree to contracts that are longer than a year or two–especially with highly talented, youthful starlets like Ronaldo. I can see why United wanted to tie him up for a long time. It will probably come out to their advantage anyway, assuming they can coax a fat transfer fee out of Real. United got a couple of great years out of him and they can use the cash to pick up other players. No player is irreplaceable.
(Those grapes are sooo deliciously sour).
June 8, 2008 at 9:59 pm |
Sour? They taste pretty sweet to me…
Anyway, we’re going through similar crap with Hleb at the moment, and maybe with Adebayor as well depending on how far Milan or Barcelona want to push things.