This Month In Analytics: Why Have Football Clubs Been Reluctant To Adopt Advanced Analytics?
Published: 29th January 2025
– Updated: 29th January 2025
Why have many clubs been slow to integrate advanced football analytics into their long-term strategy? And how is this reluctance something shrewd bettors can take advantage of? As we head deeper into 2025, today Richard Whittall reflects on the last month in the world of football analytics.
January signalled the start of another year in football analytics, and so it's fitting to start this month's analytics roundup with a link to 21st Club analyst Omar Chaudhuri's blog, a retrospective on how far the field has come along since 2025. In addition to providing an excellent summary of how football analytics have progressed in four years' time, it's also a very useful resource for those interesting in reading some of the leading lights in sports statistics right now.
Chaudhuri's comments on how professional football clubs, particularly those in England, have come to adapt advanced statistics, are especially enlightening:
If the amateur analytics community has taken 5 strides forward in 4 years, the professional clubs have shuffled awkwardly in the vague direction of north.
This isn't to criticise the clubs entirely. In the grand scheme of things, many are still small or medium-sized businesses who view analytics as a leap into the unknown, and don't have the time to investigate further. Even if a club did have inclination to invest in a team of "quants", would they know who to hire? And can they ensure that this department would have a voice in the club?
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This problem of how clubs even begin to understand, let alone apply, some of the public research in analytics (there are countless examples, including Michael Caley's excellent work with Expected Goals) may also be a reflection of how they're run.
Sean Ingle considered this possibility for the Guardian this past month, and questioned whether, paradoxically, the extraordinary wealth provided to the Premier League by television rights fees may in fact be hindering the progress of innovative thinking, including integrating analytics into the player recruitment process. Ingle put the question to 21st Club co-founder Blake Wooster, who noted that, "It is possible for the 'poorer' clubs to achieve an edge
