“Expected Goals” explains how data changed football Data led to the rise of the “long-ball” game, then to its demise

---

 “Expected Goals” explains how data changed football 
Data led to the rise of the “long-ball” game, then to its demise 
 
The most coveted figure in this summer’s European football-transfer window 
was neither a superstar player nor a feted coach. He was a data analyst. In 
just over a decade at Liverpool, Michael Edwards helped revitalise an 
underperforming giant of English football. When he left the club in May, a 
flurry of rivals tried unsuccessfully to sign him. His ascent is also the story of 
how football, long an anti-intellectual sport, finally realised that numbers 
could sharpen a competitive edge. 
Mr Edwards was not the first to study English football through data. In the 
1950s an accountant called Charles Reep began tallying passes, crosses and 
shots, annotating over 2,000 games and writing up his findings in the 
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. His main conclusion was that a 
team’s chances of keeping the ball fell with each pass. The implication was 
that they should shoot on goal as quickly as possible. Reep is cited as an 
inspiration for the grim “long-ball” style of play that took off in England in 
the 1980s and peaked in Wimbledon’s victory in the fa Cup of 1988. 
By the turn of the millennium, more in-game actions could be recorded more 
quickly and accurately. After his on-field career was curtailed by injury, Mr 
Edwards began a second one at Portsmouth in the early 2000s, combining 
data and video clips to analyse the opposition. In these early days, data was 
often used to berate players for their physical performance, such as how far 
they had run. But as Rory Smith of the New York Times explains in “Expected 
Goals”, a group of innovative firms and internet hobbyists gradually collated 

---

more and more match data and drew more sophisticated conclusions. When 
Mr Edwards went to Liverpool, he built a data department that included an 
astrophysicist, a chess champion and a former researcher on the Higgs boson 
at cern. 
Analysts have faced plenty of resistance. Liverpool were mocked for giving 
them a say in player recruitment alongside Brendan Rodgers, then the 
manager. The club’s American owners decided they preferred Mr Edwards’s 
empirical approach and sacked Mr Rodgers. Under his successor, Jürgen 
Klopp, canny signings saw Liverpool overhaul rivals with much deeper 
pockets. “Liverpool’s success gave English football a begrudging epiphany,” 
writes Mr Smith. “It is the teams who do not invest [in data] who are 
considered outdated, old-fashioned, faintly neolithic.” 
Already, the adoption of analytics by most elite teams means the advantage 
conferred has shrunk. The launch of giant player databases has aided due 
diligence on potential signings. Tactics have changed too: long-range shots 
and crosses have declined in the Premier League as data has shown they 
might lead to fewer goals than many coaches realised. 
Still, there is more to come. One club official tells Mr Smith that “there are 
no more than a handful of teams in English football doing anything even 
vaguely useful with analytics.” In its secrecy, at least, football remains a 
closed shop. Nevertheless, “Expected Goals” is an upbeat tale of openness. 
Mr Edwards and others have proved there is more than one way to achieve 
success—and persuaded an often, insular game to become more broad-
minded. 
Essential words for writing and speaking 
1. Demise - the end of the operation or existence of something: 
Huge corporate farms have led to the demise of many small, family-
owned farms. 
2. Coveted - strongly desired by many: 
The Caldecott Medal is a coveted children’s book award. 
3. Revitalise - to make something grow, develop, or become successful 
again: 
A variety of policy initiatives have been undertaken aimed at 
revitalizing the economy. 
4. Tally - a record or count of a number of things: 

---

Make sure to keep a tally of the number of customers going in and out. 
5. Berate - to criticize or speak in an angry manner to someone: 
As he left the meeting, he was berated by angry demonstrators. 
6. Begrudging - given or done unwillingly: 
The concert attracted begrudging praise from the band's usually hostile 
critics. 
7. Epiphany - a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or 
suddenly become conscious of, something that is very important to you 
It is a marvellous epiphany, fully rewarding the faithful reader's labour. 
8. Faintly - slightly or not strongly: 
She seemed faintly embarrassed to see us there. 
9. Due diligence - the detailed examination of a company and its financial 
records, done before becoming involved in a business arrangement with 
it, such as buying it or selling its shares to investors: 
The buyout group's due diligence is expected to run till late March.