Eight to Calculate
The Key to Meaningful Football Data
Why wait 8 games before trading?
Well, I can think of 88 reasons why – each one is a day between the end of last season and the start of the new one (Premier League 2023/24 to 2024/25). At the start of the season, there's no fresh data – only last season's, which is already 88 days old at best.
Let me take you back to 2019, when Leeds United's Marcelo Bielsa admitted to sending an intern to spy on Derby County's practice sessions ahead of their match. Bielsa revealed in a press conference, in his characteristic broken English, that this was not a one-off incident, but a regular tactic, common practice, he claimed, for clubs to gather intel on their opponents' formations and set pieces. This gives you some insight into the lengths clubs will go to in order to predict their rivals' performance. Top European clubs spend anywhere from £100,000 to £500,000 per year on advanced data analytics, and millions more on scouting and opposition research.
The first games of the season often bring major upsets, with clubs underestimating their opposition. Who remembers Arsenal's 2013 opener against Aston Villa, when Paul Lambert's side shocked Arsène Wenger's Gunners with a 3-1 defeat? Or Sam Allardyce's Bolton in 2006/07, who had lost all but one of their pre-season games, only for Kevin Davies to open the scoring, followed by a stunning 43-yard goal from Ivan Campo to seal a victory over Tottenham?
Just as teams gather and analyse data to decide on formations or set pieces that will leave their opponents flat-footed as the ball hits the back of the net, we use data to trade these games. We wait for eight games to collect enough information, allowing us to build a profile of teams and predict how they'll perform against similar opponents.
I often emphasise the importance of profiling a team's strengths and weaknesses, which can only be done with data. While eight games may not seem like much, in the Premier League, this equates to 80 total matches played. Thanks to the variety of opponents in these 80 games, we can start building reliable profiles and begin predicting how the next 10 matches of the weekend will unfold.
If a Premier League team could start its fixture list from match nine after observing the first eight fixtures, they would pay millions for that advantage. I, however, don't face the pressure of trading from match one, nor do I need to spend millions to wait for better information. And nor do you.
So, why not wait eight games?
