EPL Wages Revisited: Fun with Statistics, Part II

Soccer Orb’s resident statistician, Steve, shared an interesting bit of research with us a couple of days ago (See Premiership Ratings: Biggest Bang for the Buck from June 6). I’m going to swim into some dangerous waters and interpret his findings with my quasi-layperson’s eyes.

His model was simple, but very revealing. Using EPL wage data from the 2006-7 season, he built a model that, in words, looks something like this:

For each of the twenty clubs, the total number of points earned in Premier League matches is a function of the total (player) wages paid by the club for that season.

In other words, how much of any given club’s success can be explained by the quality of its roster? “Quality” cannot be perfectly measured by a number, but a player’s salary is the proxy variable that Steve used, mostly because wages were a major factor in the recent Deloitte report of the financial condition of European football.

Steve’s results were quite strong, given that he was trying to learn how much one factor–wages–explained team success. Also, he was forced to use a small sample–twenty observations, confined to just one league. It would be great to have this data over a period of five or so years, and to have the numbers not just for the EPL but also for La Liga, Serie A, and the Bundesliga. Steve, the cheapskate, wasn’t willing to cough up £600 for this year’s full report.

According to his model, about two-thirds of the variation in a team’s points could be explained by the variation in the wages that it paid to its players. It is important to understand that, although wages are a powerful predictor of team success, they’re not the only predictor. One-third of the variation in team points is due to other factors besides wages, factors that were not included in this model. Why weren’t they included? Because Steve wanted to isolate the effect of wages, since they were given a lot of attention by the Deloitte analysts.

If you look at his graph (again, it’s in the post before this one), you’ll see the strong positive relationship between salaries and Premiership points. To be more precise, each £1 million pound increase in salaries changes the season’s point total by .46.

Steve noted that Manchester United’s point total for the season was actually seventeen points higher than the simple wage model predicted. I immediately jumped on this as evidence of the “Sir Alex Ferguson” effect. His long experience and eye for youthful, underpriced talent contributed to his ability to get more points out of his players, regardless of their quality as proxied by salaries.

What about Chelsea? If you look at Steve’s graph, you’ll see that its data point lies below the regression line. (Insert gloating smirk-face here). That is, given the considerable amount by which the Chelsea roster lightened Abramovich’s checkbook, the team finished the season with fewer points than the model predicted. Why? Well, you tell me. What variables would help to improve the explanatory power of the model? No matter what you come up with, it’s clear that Jose Mourinho & Co. didn’t manage their costly resources very well.

Models like this are a good starting point in helping to isolate the factors associated with a club’s success. But you have to remember that the analyst is always constrained by the data that are available. It would have been great to have had several years’ worth of data so that a time-series analysis could be performed. Then you “build a more dynamic model,” according to Steve. For example, you could measure the extent to which last years’ success influences the current year’s salaries, (because a good year means more money from shirt sales, or whatever), which as we’ve seen has a big impact on the current year’s success.

Many thanks to Steve for putting his statistical expertise to work on salary-performance relationship. (I won’t thank him too much because I know that he’d gladly spend all his waking hours doing sports stats analysis instead of that options volatility stuff).

A final word: fortunately, no model can completely explain success on the pitch. As someone who followed baseball and (American) football first, to my eyes soccer is inherently difficult to quantify. I hope it stays that way. Soccer’s beauty would be diminished if all of its mysteries were revealed through regression analysis.

And now it’s time for Germany-Poland. Then, a few hours on my knees praying that Argentina beats us by no more than three or four goals…

Premiership Ratings: Biggest Bang for the Buck

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

Soccer, as Wall Street sees it

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal included not one, but two pieces of football-related reporting. And you won’t find either one on the sports page, either. (Yes, there is a sports page in every Friday’s Weekend Journal ).

I’ll give you three guesses at what I find objectionable in Culture Clash: Soccer Fans, Art Elite Butt Heads. This fascinating story describes how Basel, Switzerland is coping with the nearly simultaneous influx of football supporters for Euro 2008 and visitors for “the world’s most prestigious contemporary art fair.” The latter include the sort of people who are prepared to pay $600,000 for a sculpture that’s comprised of numerous small rooms, each decorated with political images.

Dear readers, you’re no doubt seething with indignation, as was I. Something is wrong with the world when honest, hard-working supporters of the Swiss and Czech national teams must share Basel with denizens of art snobbatoria from around the globe. But would you believe that the WSJ has a different take on this? They’ve quoted a New York art advisor who claims that “soccer hooligans drove our room rates through the roof.” Curiously, she believes that “This has ‘Christopher Guest movie’ written all over it.”

Does she mean a film like Best in Show? And the art people are like the high-strung, status-conscious couple whose weimeraner attacked one of the judges? (You really must see this film, if you haven’t already).

We see a photo of a wild-eyed, flag-waving man and boy juxtaposed next to an elegant couple standing in front of a no doubt significant piece of modern art. Most of the article is spent describing the art crowd’s dismay, but the author did apparently speak to one footy supporter. He is a social worker who counsels “troublesome soccer fans.” Really, I’m not making this up.

In Soccer Players Drain Coffers,
Steve McGrath takes a look at a recent Deloitte report on wages, revenues, and profitability in European football. (The full article is not available online without a subscription. If you have access to the print version, please see page C2 of the WSJ, May 30, 2008).

There’s nothing offensive about this story, unless you’re a Chelsea fan. During the 2006-7 season, Chelsea paid 132.8 million pounds in player salaries to Arsenal’s 89.7 million and Manchester United’s 92.3 million. I suppose Chelsea did win two trophies in 2007 (the Carling Cup counts, right?) and United only won the Premiership. The Journal said nothing about this, noting only that neither London club has won the Champions League.

Other interesting facts: John Terry was the highest-paid player in the Premiership in 2006-7, Premier League salaries as whole are 75% higher than those in La Liga, and Bundesliga operating profits of 250 million euros exceeded those of the Premiership (141 million euros), for the first time ever. As a percentage of revenue, player salaries at top clubs are at record levels (63%). High salaries lead the clubs to take on debt and raise ticket prices…etc., etc. You won’t catch me wringing my hands over any of this, though. When fans stop buying tickets and watching televised matches, the salary spiral will stop.

There’s supposed to be no such thing as bad publicity, but I think that the tiresome, offensive tone of the Culture Clash article far outweighs the Journal’s neutral coverage of European club football finances. The former, after all, occupied a prominent front-page position in Friday’s popular Weekend Journal and “Soccer Players Drain Coffers” was placed on page two of the Money & Investing section.

That probably wasn’t obscure enough for John Terry, though. The Journal still had room to run the now-famous photo of him seated on the rain-soaked pitch after that critical missed penalty in last week’s Champions League final.

Even Better Than the Real Thing…

I watched the Champions League final at Fado, a pub in downtown Chicago. I hadn’t been there before and didn’t know anything about the number of screens, nor how easy it would be to get a table near one of them. So I recorded the game and, happily, remembered to set up the DVR to record two shows afterward…just in case.

I don’t usually watch games in public. Let’s see, there was last year’s Gold Cup final at Quigley’s and a Chicago Fire playoff game in 2006 at the Globe and…that’s about it. I am not very social about these things. I like to concentrate on the game while freely expressing my wild, half-baked opinions to Steve. But I was persuaded that the first-ever all-English Champions League final should be seen in a pub, despite the inevitable presence of Chelsea supporters.

We arrived about ninety minutes before the start, but only one table was open. We snagged it. Things got a bit tight as the crowd grew, but everyone around us was generous about sharing space. I didn’t have a perfect view, but I did see every bit of the action. Some people in the group–Steve’s friend Jonathan and friends–elected to stand for a more direct view of the game. They don’t seem to mind, do they?

The atmosphere at Fado was all that I had hoped for. The place was jammed with serious supporters of both teams, although red shirts outnumbered blue. Each side was enthusiastic but mostly respectful. Best of all, everyone was really, really into the game. The underground community of soccer fans was out in force–and many (most?) were American, too.

After van der Sar blocked Nicolas Anelka’s penalty the party really got under way for the celebrating United supporters.

This evening I treated myself to a second viewing of the game. It was a delight to watch it without yo-yo-ing between numbness and high anxiety. Who can savor the drama of a penalty shoot-out right in the middle of it? Not I. My keenly-felt disappointment when Petr Cech easily saved Ronaldo’s poorly-taken shot seems excessive now, knowing as I do that Manchester United would still lift the trophy.

And John Terry’s misery? Just as awful to watch the second time as the first.

Layer Cake

“The top four next year will be the same top four as this year.”

That was Kevin Keegan’s prediction after Newcastle United’s loss to Chelsea in the penultimate game of the season. He grumbled that the league’s evolution into an elite, uncrackable quartet plus sixteen also-rans meant that “boring” football was the inevitable result.

Keegan’s words unleashed a torrent of commentary. Just google “Keegan Football Boring” and take your pick of the opinions that were spouted by everyone from Reading’s Steve Coppell to every sports journalist in Britain to bloggers around the globe–except Soccer Orb. That is because I’m not inclined to conduct an examination of the state of English football that is sufficiently thorough and comparative to analyze Keegan’s assertions. It is true that since I’ve followed the English game (1998 or so), the title has been held by just three teams–Manchester United, Arsenal, and Chelsea. And the top four are nearly always those three, plus Liverpool. However, Everton finished fourth as recently as 2005 and both Newcastle United and Leeds United–currently residing in the “where-are-they-now” file–made several appearances during the past decade.

I am straying off-point already. I understand that the rich tend to get richer in the world of sport, especially in European soccer. Teams that regularly appear in the Champions League have access to cash flows that open doors that will forever remain closed to lesser teams. Everybody knows that. But does that make the EPL boring? Speaking from an American viewpoint–not at all.

Forget for the moment this year’s nail-biting race for the title and the relegation drama at the other end of the table. Just look at the non-league competitions that spice up European football. I was reminded of this by today’s UEFA Cup Final match between Glasgow Rangers and Zenit St. Petersburg. Though it isn’t nearly as prestigious or lucrative as the Champions League, the UEFA Cup tournament is a portal to extra-league competition for eighty clubs across the continent. Over the years, the most successful of these have been Juventus, Inter Milan, and Liverpool. Tens of thousands of supporters from Glasgow and St. Petersburg descended upon Manchester for the deciding match. Even though the UEFA Cup may be a poor relation compared to the Champions League, everybody seemed pretty happy to be there, especially the Zenit side at the final whistle.

Speaking of the Champions League…most American sports fans could never imagine anything like this. A tournament that runs simultaneously with the domestic league schedule? Just for fun, try suggesting this to an NFL or Major League Baseball fan. The level of competition is daunting, given that it’s reserved for truly the best of the best. And it’s not as if Champions League glory always goes to a domestic league winner. Liverpool finished in 5th place in 2005, yet won a great victory over AC Milan in the Champions League final. There’s nothing boring or predictable in either the UEFA Cup or Champions League tournaments.

Then there’s the FA Cup. True, it lacks the prestige of Europe and the top English teams often field youthful, inexperienced players in the early rounds. But Manchester United and Chelsea fought tooth and nail in the Cup final last May, if you’ll remember. Winning a Double is so difficult that it’s been done only ten times since 1889 and just one club has ever won the Premiership, FA Cup, and Champions League ttitles all in the same year.

All this implies that there’s no shortage of meaningful competition in English club soccer. The relegation/promotion system that governs the many layers of the English game guarantees that things get shaken up often enough in the lower half of the table to keep it interesting. It’s clear that the top of the Premiership strongly resembles a very stable oligarchy, yet this doesn’t trouble me. Why? Because real achievement is measured by multiple trophies these days. The top clubs are held to higher standards that are more difficult to meet. Doubles and trebles are rare and likely to remain so. Moreover, competition among those top clubs is keen. Were any supporters of Manchester United, Chelsea, or Arsenal bored this season? I doubt it.

I understand that the examples I’m providing here don’t really speak to Keegan’s point, which is the unlikelihood of second or third-tier clubs breaking the top four’s stranglehold on Premiership glory. This is probably true. And it won’t change unless the FA bans its clubs from participating in lucrative European competitions. The probability of that event is exactly zero, of course. So I would like to invite those Brits who find the Premiership boring to take a trip across the pond in late July or August. They can take in a baseball game…perhaps between teams like the Chicago White Sox and Kansas City Royals. Both were hopelessly out of contention–for anything at all–weeks before the 2007 season was over. With no threat of relegation, why did the fans bother to show up? For the beer, hot dogs and peanuts?

Why Can’t Every Game be Just Like This?

“I think there might be a few prawn-eaters here today.”

Such were The Guy’s thoughts before Sunday’s showdown between the LA Galaxy and the Chicago Fire.

Alas, Toyota Park does not serve prawn sandwiches, forever immortalized by Roy Keane’s contemptuous remark about Old Trafford fans whose priorities did not include actually watching the Red Devils play. And yet I did notice that the line for Dippin Dots was even longer than usual. Was this because of the 80 degree temperature or all those grade schoolers running around in Galaxy #23 shirts?

No matter. This was a perfect day for American soccer. Though I can’t say that the atmosphere in the stadium went all the way to eleven, everybody (well, everybody over age 16), knew they were watching a game whose outcome really mattered. Yeah, they were there to see the guy from East London go head to head with the guy from south of the border. But I sensed that the celebrity thing took a back seat to the showdown on the pitch. Geez, this must be what it feels like to support an English team locked in a relegation battle! We’re getting there, inch by inch….

I absolutely pitied the Galaxy, especially Beckham. Only victory would save their season and neither the Fire nor their supporters were having any of that. Donovan was booed with gusto whenever he took a corner (a bit harsh for a guy who scores for the USMNT), as was Becks when he came in near the 60th. Though LA had a few scary chances in front of goal–especially after Beckham served up some good crosses and corners–possession time and shots on goal favored the Fire. If we had better strikers, the game would have been a blowout in the first half. I do give Chad Barrett points for trying hard, but he missed a handful of good chances, including an open goal early in the game. And Paolo Wanchope? How could I improve on the guy behind me: He runs like a zombie! Zombies, don’t run, do they? I guess that’s the point.

The Beckham v. Blanco matchup has been overblown. Their playing styles are so different that comparisons are meaningless. Beckham’s value has always been his precision kicking: free kicks, corners, crosses. Blanco is a tireless playmaker. Cuahtemoc (I’m trying to spell that without looking–I should know it by now, but I sense that I’ve misplaced a vowel), had an outstanding game on Sunday. At age 34, he plays with such fire in the belly that I would love to see film of his salad days in Mexico. I wonder if Becks looks at him with envy? I mean, at some point all the hype and pressure and 24/7 scrutiny of his entire existence has to get to him, don’t you think? Blanco flew in under the radar of the Anglo media for the most part, and has nothing at all to prove to his legions of Mexican fans here and back home. Less media attention plus no injuries equals relaxed, happy, productive footballers.

I was going to spend this entire post enthusing about the Cinderella boy of Sunday’s game. Except John Thorrington is no Cinderella boy. He’s more like the Heartbreak Kid and the regular media (no fair, Luis A.), have already written all the cool stuff about him. Like how even though he signed with the occupants of Old Trafford as a teenager, his career has been so plagued with injuries that starting for League One side Huddersfield Town had been one of its highlights.

I think that changed on Sunday. Thorrington burst on to the field for the final half hour of Sunday’s game, looking for all the world like a man just told that he was playing in his final game. He made every second count, scoring the winning goal with a lovely chip over Galaxy keeper Joe Cannon. Seriously, I didn’t see Sky Sports News on FSC afterward, but I shall take umbrage if that goal and celebration didn’t make the highlights. Because of the Beckham connection, it could happen, right?

Finally, I suppose that the media and the soccersphere thrive on speculation, but enough is enough. Yes, a draw would have pitted us against Chivas in the first round of the playoffs instead of DC United. But what kind of athlete ever steps on the field of play without going for the win? (No gratuitous references to Manny Ramirez, please). Remember that Beckham was part of the glorious Man United squad that produced two stoppage time goals to win the 1999 Champions League. Should the Fire have played for the draw, just assuming that the Galaxy wouldn’t score in stoppage time? Nope. Besides, a goal like Thorrington’s must surely inspire his teammates. And what team can’t use a little inspiration going up against the strongest team in the league?