Archive • Get Goalside football analytics blog • Buttondown

The Athletic’s Michael Cox prompted online posts this week with this article: ‘Has the impact of analytics on modern football been overstated?’. Writers...

Just run some more

September 7, 2024

It's only 'a sprint' if it's from the Prozone region of Leeds; otherwise it's just sparkling high-intensity runs

The four quadrants of football

August 23, 2024

(four quadrants, wodrunts for forks)

New season, same blog

August 15, 2024

The greatest benefit of studying history fudging the boundaries of time periods for your own benefit. In 2017, FIFA launched its programme to benchmark...

A fifth birthday

July 28, 2024

Get Goalside is five years old. I was aware that it pre-dated the pandemic, but hadn’t put together its age until going back through the archive after...

Understand football and you'll understand AI

July 21, 2024

More than most Get Goalside pieces, this is written with a wide audience in mind. Also more than most Get Goalside pieces, it owes a lot to those who’ve...

Engineering the (super)market

May 9, 2024

Who is helping these football clubs do their weekly shop?

What we talk about when we talk about 'analytics'

March 23, 2024

Every movement has important dates. Football analytics has a few: 2003, the year Moneyball was published; 2014, the year of the first Opta Pro Forum, an...

What do we actually know about football?

February 3, 2024

Let’s take stock of where we are. Expected goals has been on Match of the Day since 2017, two years after Arsène Wenger made waves by referencing it in a...

So... everyone's a decision-maker now

October 14, 2023

It’s sort of become an annual tradition at Get Goalside to write about how the analytics industry is converging around one specific point. First it was...

Purpose of innovation; process of innovation

October 8, 2023

In the words of the musical heavyweights Scouting for Girls, "There's a little bit of Christmas in the air."* Not, like, literally. But the dawning of this...

Time-waste with tracking data, not possession

September 15, 2023

Stick through this short newsletter for a treat at the end We've reached and passed the marker of the first international break for this men's European...

Time to give ball-in-play measures a kick into touch?

August 18, 2023

In Sunday school, as a child, we were taught that God loves all His creation in all its diversity, from the lowliest frog to the highliest mountain goat,...

Stop the clock

August 1, 2023

Edit - 18 August 2023: A previous version of this post used data from the 2018 World Cup. This data has since been suspected of being suboptimal for the...

When PIF comes to shove

July 27, 2023

Hi there, it's been a while. With the second half of the calendar year now underway, let's take a look back at the turn-of-the-year piece and what Get...

Is it better to be a leftie?

June 8, 2023

Rafael Nadal hits a forehand with his left hand and signs his name with his right. How different would the honours list at Roland Garros look if his uncle...

The only rule is it has to be fun

April 15, 2023

We're going to talk about television. We're going to talk about data. And we're going to ask what the definition of 'fun' is. It must be the Get Goalside...

A Pandora's Box of football media stats use

April 12, 2023

It's 2009 and you've just stepped out of the cinema when a version of yourself from 2023 appears in front of you. You exchange exclamations, pleasantries, a...

'What do you mean?': GPTs and post-Opta Forum thoughts

March 22, 2023

"With what shall I fetch it...""In a bucket, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry / In a bucket, dear Henry, dear Henry, in a bucket.""But there's a hole in my...

How confident should Arsenal fans feel?

March 5, 2023

You can now follow Get Goalside on Instagram at getgoalside.analytics Arsenal fans, how confident are you feeling about the Premier League? The state of play...

Supporter special: 360 Review

February 18, 2023

Hello supporter, thanks for supporting. I thought I'd write a bit about the newsletter from earlier this week on labelling out-of-possession position data on...

High-fat data for low(er)-fat costs

February 15, 2023

Science can do many things, and soon it may be able to make low-fat chocolate that doesn't taste of bland disappointment. The outside of a piece is the most...

An advanced defensive data personal library

February 4, 2023

Last week I sent out a defensive stats personal library. I got a few suggestions for further pieces to add to it, but generally found myself wanting to...

A defensive stats personal library

January 24, 2023

Historians sometimes get very worried about floppy discs. Also DVDs, USB sticks, most social media sites. They're collectively haunted by that one big...

Every question you need to ask about running stats

January 20, 2023

The way that media uses running stats is the perfect mix of 'very appealing' and 'not publicly scrutinised' that makes some stats people antsy. The data is...

Recently read: The rise and fall of peer review

January 10, 2023

Hi Get Goalside supporter, happy new year. There was an article I read recently, 'The rise and fall of peer review', that I found interesting and...

Goodbye 2022, Hello 2023

December 26, 2022

Hello to you, dear reader, and hello to the oncoming 2023. 2022 was a year. England won the women's Euros, that was fun. Real Madrid pulled off some...

What if you let loose a data scientist on in-match decisions?

December 22, 2022

Each year that Get Goalside has been running when Christmas has rolled around I've sent out newsletters that try to max out the silly while also being...

Prompt: Write an article about potential AI use in football...

December 7, 2022

This article was not produced by an AI. Questionable that it was even produced by an I. The Jetsons have a lot to answer for. Of all the space-related...

An OpenAI Q&A about expected goals

December 2, 2022

On Friday evening I started seeing tweets about OpenAI's ChatGPT which were the usual case of tech-y people playing with a new toy and tweeting about it. I...

The European Premier League

November 22, 2022

I should start this post by saying two things: 1) I think that the strength of the English men's football pyramid is one of the best parts of the nation's...

Everything you need to know about defensive statistics (well, the basics)

November 22, 2022

Stats have taken off, TV coverage is using expected goals, but what about defenders? As we'll see, defensive statistics are a little more nuanced, a little...

What is midfield for?

November 13, 2022

Have you ever, and you have no reason to have done, stopped to think about the story of the word 'Eureka's origin? There was a bath, there was Archimedes,...